Why am I a Composer?: Why The Planets?

AFX Industrial (film scores)

Well its been an amazingly busy year for me this year, so please let me share the task that has been getting me up early for the last nine months.

Why The Planets?

As you may know if you follow me on Twitter, in 2012 I decided the time was right to arrange the entire Planets suite by Gustav Holst ... What was the thinking behind this and why did I decide to dedicate an entire year of my life to these seven pieces?

Click image for larger view.

So why did I decide to take on this monstrous, awesome work? From the strident opening of Mars to the haunting, choral ending of Neptune, Holst's seminal work has been a huge influence on composers. From classical works to film scoring you can hear Holst's unmistakable orchestral colors on countless pieces composed in the last one hundred years. However, above all other areas his influence has especially dominated the area of film scoring - just listen to any John Williams piece and you'll hear Holst at work.

Where do you start?

So where did I start? Well, to arrange these seven pieces so they work in a modern film score context I first had to track down a copy of the two hundred page manuscript. My intention was to find a copy as close to Holst's original hand written copy as I could and I ended up sourcing a version from 1921.

Of course, how music is written and the language used in the text sections (often German but mostly Italian) is constantly changing but luckily for me this was predominantly in Italian which, after English is the language I'm most comfortable with.

The complete score of all seven movements comes in at around 1500 bars. To arrange the work correctly, every note of every bar has to be arranged on the staves individually for every instrument in the orchestra. I estimate it takes around ten minutes to arrange one bar on paper, so to simply lift the score from the original 1921 manuscript and arrange it in a modern, readable format took me around 250 hours!

If I look at the files on my mac I can see that I completed the first movement Venus (I didn't arrange them in order) sometime in March 2013 which means I probably put the very first note down sometime in late February. Hmm I have arranged and recorded some intimidating pieces in my time (Verdi's Requiem springs to mind) but sitting here and and putting down the very first note of a 1500 bar score is something else I can tell you! I'm due to place on the manuscript the very final note of the entire Planets score this week - it's now October.

I also had to discipline myself to start working at 6:30 am for three solid months just to get through the toughest sections of this 1921 manuscript. There has been a lot of hair pulling a lot of coffee drinking and the odd call to Dean Haydn Jones my back up arranger to discuss the finer points of the Euphonium and open key writing, but at last I'm happy to say it's ALMOST complete. The final recordings will take place at Shepperton Film Studios in December 2013.

Will the recording be for sale?

The CD will be in all good stores from FEBRUARY 2014! - You can buy either a physical CD or an Mp3 download copy.

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Final thoughts.

It has been a hell of a journey - to the Planets and back lol, but I have learned so much from this experience. Each piece of music is a microcosm of other worldly motifs and a myriad of fragmented ideas that all blend and mesh so damn wonderfully. I will be very proud to follow in the footsteps of all those great composers who have already mined Holst for these sonic wonders.

Watch out world I now have a new string to my bow and it's the lowest, baddest B string you could ever, ever imagine!

Peace to you all !

David.