At a time when the UK is gripped by turbulent times British composer Michael Brand has taken themes from Holst’s Jupiter from his ‘Planets’ Suite (including the patriotic ‘I vow to thee my Country’) and created a new musical context for them. Rhythmic and at times barbaric, sometimes oddly bitonal yet also reassuringly hymn–like, this work reflects the contemporary mood of a disturbed nation – and perhaps a disorientated world

Program Notes

Michael Brand wrote Fragments of Jupiter in 2019 when British society was deeply divided by political rifts. The unsettled and unexpected sound-world of some of the fragments of from Holst’s ‘Jupiter’ is deliberately at odds with the patriotic hymn to reflect this mood.

The piece draws its inspiration from the ‘Jupiter’ movement of Holst’s The Planets. It uses elements of the thematic material as its starting point, such as the opening rhythm on the tenor drum which continues through much of the piece, and the initial three note pattern from one of Jupiter’s themes, and sets them with insistent rhythm and hints of bi-tonality against the Medieval-like dance-tune which is part of ‘The Bringer of Jollity’, and also the broad hymn ‘I vow to thee my Country’. Although Holst had created this tune for The Planets (first performed in 1918) it did not acquire its patriotic role as a British anthem until he adapted it to fit the words of a poem by Cecil Spring Rice, who was the British Ambassador the USA during much of World War 1. Now it is often sung at ceremonial occasions and at the Last Night of the Proms.