Reception Radio: Mercury the Winged Messenger, by Gustav Holst

The trickster god... in SPACE!

The Planets is maybe the most famous example of myth-inflected classical music. Written by English composer Gustav Holst between 1914 and 1917, this orchestral suite consists of seven movements, each portraying a different planet in our solar system. Or rather, each movement depicts the Roman gods after whom the planets are named. These movements are wonderful character studies of their respective gods, summarizing the personalities and traits of these deities through music.

It’s hard to choose, but Mercury might be my favourite movement. This is only party because he’s my favourite of the gods in The Planets, and I’m biased toward him. I love a touch of Hermes, what can I say. (Yes, I said Hermes, not Mercury. I maintain that the Greek gods have more resonant and fitting names than their Roman counterparts!)

There’s a sense of irreverence and fun throughout the entire piece. Listening to it feels like Hermes/Mercury is stringing you along on a prolonged spot of mischief. You can hear his laughter in the chimes and glockenspiel, and feel the whoosh of his winged sandals in the whizzing strings. I’ve always loved Holst’s use of fragments in Mercury: listen for all the fast-paced little musical ideas that interrupt each other and never quite resolve. They’re especially prominent at the very beginning and very end of the piece, where they’re played by only a handful of instruments at a time. These fragments create an overall sense of chaos, but it’s a playful, joyous chaos. Hermes/Mercury is a trickster at heart.

Don’t forget that Hermes/Mercury is also an Olympian god, and there’s some real punch behind his mischievous, boyish demeanour. He’s a conduit between life, death, and divinity, delivering messages from Olympus to Earth, and guiding the souls of the dead down to the Underworld. Mercury conveys this more grandiose side of his character, building off an initially playful tone. Holst uses big swells of sound, with the whole string section of the orchestra playing at once, to convey a sense of majesty and grandeur. These swells repeat a musical idea that first appears as a fragment in the piece, taking an irreverent little piece of sound and growing it into something truly powerful. To my delight, this section of music is quite fleeting: the orchestra quickly spins back into mischievous fragments of melody. It’s almost like Hermes/Mercury wants to remind us that he’s a powerful Olympian god, but he’s at his happiest being a trickster.

For my fellow classical music nerds, here’s a follow-the-score version of Mercury. You can watch the instruments in the orchestra trade musical fragments in real time!

I’d love to cover the rest of The Planets on Reception Radio sometime. In a future entry, I’ll have to talk about Holst’s tremendous influence on modern film soundtracks: it’s fascinating stuff, and once you listen to The Planets, you’ll start noticing echoes of it every time you watch a movie. Next time you spot a roguishly charming trickster onscreen, listen closely for music that sounds like Mercury…