Page "The Planets" Paragraph 28

A typical performance of all seven movements lasts for about fifty minutes though Holst's own electric recording from 1926 lasted just over forty-two and a half minutes.

Some commentators have suggested that the ordering is structural, with the anomaly of Mars, Venus, Mercury, instead of the reverse, being a device to make the first four movements match the form of a symphony.

An alternative explanation may be the ruling of astrological signs of the zodiac by the planets: if the signs are listed along with their ruling planets in the traditional order starting with Aries, ignoring duplication, Pluto ( then undiscovered ) and the luminaries ( the Sun and Moon ), the order of the movements corresponds.

Another possibility, this time from an astronomical perspective, is that the first three movements, representing the inner terrestrial planets, are ordered by decreasing distance from the Sun ; the remaining movements, representing the gas giants, are ordered by increasing distance from the Sun.

Critic David Hurwitz offers an alternative explanation for the piece's structure: that " Jupiter " is the centrepoint of the suite and that the movements on either side are in mirror images.

Thus " Mars " involves motion and " Neptune " is static ; " Venus " is sublime while " Uranus " is vulgar, and " Mercury " is light and scherzando while " Saturn " is heavy and plodding.

This hypothesis is lent credence by the fact that the two outer movements, " Mars " and " Neptune ", are both written in rather unusual quintuple metre.