The Planets Music Lesson

This blog post will focus all about Gustav Holst’s Orchestral Suite, “The Planets”, and discuss ways to incorporate it into your General Music classroom. 

For some context, as a proud Strings kid in school (Woo!), I remember having so much fun playing Jupiter and Mars in orchestra and I knew, as an educator, I wanted to bring these pieces to life for my students! 

With this in mind, I created a Journey to “The Planets” Virtual Field Trip, which can be found here on TpT (*shameless plug! :D), if you’re interested, after hearing a bit about how I organized the unit!

There are a total of 7 planets within Holst’s “The Planets” and, for my planning purposes, I envisioned having each planet be a mini-lesson (10-15 minutes) at the beginning or end of a lesson. Rather than focus 7 full lessons, I felt this would be the most engaging way to provide meaningful musical experiences for them while still continuing to teach other concepts. I also found it challenging to always incorporate the actual piece of music for each planet in the accompanying activities so I designed some activities that would connect with the overall theme of that Planet, for example.

How I structured each mini-lesson:

• Set the Stage for your Journey to Outer Space!
  • Do a countdown and blast off into space! 
  • Briefly talk about Gustav Holst and how, as a composer, he was so inspired by space that he decided to compose 7 movements called “The Planets”
• Philharmonia Sessions (London)
  • They made amazing 4-5 minute Listening Guides for every moment that provide information on the planet, themes/motif, Greek mythology.

Mars – Bringer of War

Mars – The Bringer of War

• We first watch the Philharmonia Orchestra Listening Guide about Mars
• Mini-Lesson Focus:
  • Here is a Creative Movement Play-Along Video to accompany the first 2 minutes of “Mars”, which you can find on my YouTube channel here
    • This video is filled with all kinds of creative movement prompts to simulate exploring, avoiding a meteor shower and being caught in a windstorm!
    • There is also a simple and approachable Body percussion ostinato in 5/4 that helped the kids internalize the meter!

Venus – Bringer of Peace

• Start with the Guided Listening video with 3-4 Fun Facts about the planet
• Mini-Lesson Focus:
  • Highlight the Celesta used throughout this piece!
  • Talk about its use in other famous pieces of music!

Mercury – The Winged Messenger

• Guided Listening Video with 3-4 Fun Facts
• Mini-Lesson Focus:
  • For Mercury, I made a Solfege practice activity where my students would sing a given solfege pattern and then I would show a little video snippet of a particular task in the Day in the Life of an Astronaut. 
    • This provided a little extra motivation for my students to practice known concepts while making a connection to the differences in how Astronauts do their day-to-day tasks in Space without gravity!

Jupiter – Bringer of Jollity

• Guided Listening Video with 3-4 Fun Facts (The Red Spot is a storm that’s been raging for hundreds of years! Wow!)
• Highlight the Chorale (beautiful, legato part in ¾)
  • Great opportunity for an instrument play-along
    • Within my Virtual Field Trip, I created an Instrument Play-along video with suggested instruments and patterns to the Chorale
    • If you wanted to make your own, you could pick 3-4 instruments and create simple rhythm patterns to accompany that portion of the piece

Saturn – Bringer of Old Age

• Guided Listening Video with 3-4 Fun Facts
• Mini-Lesson Focus: 
  • Practice identifying Time Signatures to connect with the “Time” element within this movement using simple two-measure rhythm patterns and asking the students which Time Signature matches
    • This was a great opportunity to remind my students about other musical terms like “Bar line” and “Measure”

Uranus – The Magician

• Guided Listening Video with 3-4 Fun Facts
• After learning about the movement, I connected with the theme of a Magician by making a Rhythm Practice video (not using the music from the piece) where the students said a 4-beat rhythm pattern and then a magician performed a magic trick!

Neptune – The Mystic

• Guided Listening Video with 3-4 Fun Facts
• Create a Speech piece using the Planets and other Space vocabulary!
  • Within my Virtual Field Trip, I made a set of cards you could print out for the students to use and create 8-beat patterns to perform!