Editing The Planets (section)

===1. Mars, the Bringer of War<span class="anchor" id="Mars"></span>===

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Mars is marked [[allegro (music)|allegro]] and is in a relentless {{music|time|5|4}} [[ostinato]] for most of its duration. It opens quietly, the first two bars played by percussion, harp and ''[[col legno]]'' strings.<ref>Holst (1921), pp. 1–2</ref> The music builds to a quadruple-forte, dissonant climax.<ref>Holst (1921), p. 29</ref> Although Mars is often thought to portray the horrors of mechanised warfare, it was completed before the First World War started. The composer [[Colin Matthews]] writes that for Holst, Mars would have been "an experiment in rhythm and clashing keys", and its violence in performance "may have surprised him as much as it galvanised its first audiences".<ref name=cm>Matthews, Colin (2011). Notes to Chandos CD CHSA5086 {{oclc| 887360432}}</ref> Short comments, "harmonic dissonances abound, often resulting from clashes between moving chords and static pedal-points", which he compares to a similar effect at the end of [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky's]] ''[[The Firebird]]'', and adds that although battle music had been written before, notably by [[Richard Strauss]] in ''[[Ein Heldenleben]]'', "it had never expressed such violence and sheer terror".<ref>Short, pp. 123–124</ref>