Composer Gustav Holst heard his seven-movement orchestral suite The Planets performed in full for the first time at a private concert arranged by conductor Adrian Boult at Queen's Hall in London. Written during the First World War and inspired by astrology rather than astronomy, the suite became one of the most enduringly popular works of 20th-century English orchestral music.
Holst funded the rehearsal and performance himself as a farewell gift to friends, since he had just accepted a position teaching British troops stationed in Salonika and expected to be away for some time. Balfour Gardiner, a fellow composer and patron, actually paid for the hire of the hall and the roughly one hundred musicians of the Queen's Hall Orchestra.
Holst approached the piece through astrology, a hobby he pursued seriously, giving each movement a character tied to the traditional astrological associations of the planets rather than any scientific interest — hence "Mars, the Bringer of War," composed with eerie prescience just before the outbreak of World War I, and "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity."
The suite's public premiere came later, and its most famous melody, from "Jupiter," was later adapted into the patriotic hymn "I Vow to Thee, My Country." Holst himself grew ambivalent about the work's popularity, feeling it overshadowed his other compositions for the rest of his career.
Key people: Gustav Holst, Adrian Boult