In an article by R. Vaughan Williams, he says “In claiming for Gustav Holst that he is essentially a modern composer, I am from the outset laying myself open to misconstruction” (1). He is saying that although Holst’s music shows signs of various modern idioms and is essentially forward looking, he was still influenced by traditional compositional methods. It didn't mean that because Holst lived in the 20th century that his music was necessarily radically different from music in the classical and romantic period. Neither were his music so traditional that they didn't keep up with changing times. This will be the basis of my research.

This is a link to you tube videos of Gustav Holst's The Planets. I will refer to specific videos and their timings in my analysis discussion when required. I will be using the clips posted by lovelove.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=holst+the+planets&search_type=&aq=2&oq=holst

I've decided that I will work within the parameters of tonality and form with reference to my focus area. I will take examples from any movement, any part of The Planets, that I find useful and interesting. Of course, I won't look at the whole work in detail, just some parts. Right now, I don't really know how I'm gonna organise everything, because I've been looking at parts of the music, here and there.

The scores that I will be using are arranged for 2 pianos by Holst himself. Note also that sometimes I'll just show one piano part instead of 2, because the pianos may just be doubling each other. In such cases, I'll just show 1 piano part. Since I'm using a piano score for an orchestral work, reference to the orchestral recording on youtube may be made as well.

(1) R. Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst I., Music & Letters, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jul., 1920), pp. 181-190