Planets Suite

[cleedaub1]

When Holst wrote the "Planets" suite, why did he miss out Earth ? Has any other composer written a piece to fill in this blank ? And why are the pieces always played in the wrong order ? They should be Mercury, Venus, (Earth), Mars, Jupiter etc, but always seem to be played Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter etc. Surely Holst knew the correct order of the planets from the Sun.

[souldriver]

I've no idea why they in a random order, but didn't he also miss Pluto, as this ninth planet hadn't been discovered at the time he wrote them.

[Aschenbach]

Although Pluto was discovered in 1930, four years prior to Holst's death, Holst expressed no interest in writing a movement for it. In 2000, The Hall� Orchestra commissioned composer Colin Matthews, a Holst specialist, to write a new movement to be played with the suite. Matthews called his piece Pluto, the Renewer, and it was first performed in Manchester on May 11, 2000, with Kent Nagano conducting the Hall� Orchestra. Ironically, the movement was added at about the same time that astronomers were coming to question the status of Pluto as a planet (see the article on Pluto for further details).

To make his new movement fit, Matthews changed the ending of the "Neptune" movement to transition to "Pluto". On the Nagano CD recording, "Neptune" is offered on two different tracks so as to allow the listener to choose whether or not to hear "Pluto" by selecting the track order.