The full horror of mechanised warfare confronts us face to face in this bleakest of all tone poems. Its face is unrepentent, unrelenting and merciless and it offers us no hope of redemption. Thousands of pairs of jackbooted feet parade across the landscape, hurrying to their graves. Tanks pound cities into rubble. Bullets fly and bombs fall.
Airplanes swoop low overhead.
How surprising it is, then, to learn that Holst completed this piece long before the opening of the First World War, before the invention of the tank, before any plane had ever been fitted out to carry bombs, before the slaughter in the trenches, before the invention of poison gas. The spirit of this music is very much in keeping with the astrological significance of Jupiter as the planet of benevolence and generosity. This is not the adulterous Jupiter of mythology, though flirtation is not out of the question. We hear him chasing but not catching the ladies. The music emerges from its cavorting, twirling and gambolling out onto a central plateau of graceful dance music, then sinks back into the carefree patterns of before.