A unique performance of Gustav Holst’s masterwork The Planets – played on a magnificent pipe organ rather than by an orchestra and punctuated by poems inspired by children’s responses to the music – is to be staged in the suitably vast Salisbury Cathedral.
The idea of the community music project is to introduce more people, young and old, to the 140-year-old “Father” Willis organ, one of the treasures of the cathedral.
It is also intended to get the children who took part and the adults who will watch and listen thinking afresh about the themes Holst’s suite tackles – war, peace, joy and mysticism – which seem as relevant now as when he wrote the work a century ago.
John Challenger, the cathedral’s principal organist, said: “We have a fantastic pipe organ largely as it was when built. It’s a thrilling thing. I view it as my purpose in life to share it with as many people as possible.”
The Planets is written for a large orchestra. “Holst calls for huge instrumental forces and an unseen distant choir of sopranos and altos,” said Challenger. But he has transposed the suite for the organ, not copying the effect of the orchestral instruments but finding a new version of the suite.
“I would not have arranged The Planets for any pipe organ, but it is the character and versatility of this particular instrument which allows the music to flow. I’m not trying to imitate the orchestra but allow the music to be reborn with an organ identity.”
It is believed to be the first time The Planets has been performed on the Salisbury “Father” Willis, and Challenger said it could rarely have been played on any other cathedral organs. Challenger argues that the vastness of the building also makes the project work. “When you hear those sounds in a building, it makes you feel tiny,” he said.
The performance this Saturday will feature poetry performed by Martin Figura inspired by workshops involving four local schools including Exeter House special school. “It’s been a fascinating project to be involved with,” Figura said. “Glorious madness.”
Ideas about anger from the children of Exeter House have found their way into Figura’s poem about Mars, the bringer of war, which includes the lines: “It’s alright to be afraid, anger / will flare into fury from within.”
But in Jupiter, the bringer of jollity, he took a child’s yell during a workshop of “let’s get this party started” to compose a touching piece about his own daughter Amy, who has Down’s syndrome, and her love of fun times.
A child from another school compared planets to the human brain. Figura came up with the verse: “Mystery prowls through our caves / and cathedrals, muttering riddles / into the grey dome of our skulls.”
He – and many of the children – also loved learning that the organ’s longest pipe, which measures 10 metres (32ft), produces a note so low that the human ear can only detect it as a feeling, a rumble.
Figura wrote: “Of the organ’s majestic notes, the lowest / can’t be heard by our naked ears / but we feel a shift of air as rapture.”
The cathedral’s education officer, Katherine Dolphin, said the children involved responded vibrantly to the music and the cathedral. “They thought about the planets as people, what would a planet be thinking, what would a planet carry in a bag, what would it wear. It was a lot of fun.”
A highlight for her was when a group of boys from one school spontaneously began dancing in the choir when the opening notes of Mars boomed out. “They were completely taken in by it – remarkable.”
