Of the different time signatures that can be used in music, 5/4 and 5/8 are not terribly common. That is, outside of the work of one composer. In the case of the English composer Gustav Holst, the challenge becomes almost a case of finding a work that doesn't have a 5-in-a-bar section.
The most famous of Holst's major compositions, with good reason, is the symphonic suite The Planets, and the pounding 5/4 ostinato of the first movement -- Mars, the Bringer of War -- is unmistakable. Yet how many people have noticed that the crystalline glitter of the final Neptune the Mystic is also written throughout in a 5-beat time?
But let's get beyond the well-known Holst. Here are a few more favourite Holst works of mine, each of which has a section in 5/4 or 5/8 time.
The symphonic poem Egdon Heath has a brooding, quiet 5-beat section at its heart. In the ballet music for The Perfect Fool, the Dance of the Spirits of Fire is an energetic 5/8 with spurts of flame aptly represented by stabbing fortissimo chords of the full orchestra.
There are also a number of wonderful choral works by Holst, all greatly undervalued today, which make use of the 5-beat time. The Choral Symphony to poems by Keats uses the 5-beat rhythm very effectively in its first-movement invocation to Bacchus. The Ode to Death, a setting of Whitman, uses a very slow, solemn 5/4 to paint a picture of a funeral procession.
One of Holst's most unique inspirations is his Choral Fantasia. This work was the outcome of a festival commission for a choral work with orchestra, which would include a concerto-scaled organ part. The organ plays a lengthy fugue which culminates in a fortissimo underlain by a 5-beat ostinato on the timpani -- a figure which strangely recalls the sound world of Mars. This ostinato recurs at key points throughout the structure of the work. The most chilling moment comes near the end, when a quiet, menacing stroke on the gong ushers in the final iteration of that rhythmic figure, with the choir chanting in monotone: Then he hideth his face, whence he came to pass away, forgot, unmade, lost for aye with the things that are not.
At the opposite extreme from that darkness is the resplendent glory of The Hymn of Jesus, which I consider Holst's finest work for choir and orchestra. The text is from the Apocrypha, and was translated by Holst himself from the Greek. Being Apocryphal, it naturally includes words that are not familiar from the King James Bible! The centre of gravity of The Hymn of Jesus is the passage where the choir sings: Divine Grace is dancing, dance ye all! -- at which the orchestra leaps into a vigorous 5/4 dance, a bit reminiscent of the final bacchanale of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe. And the dance swells into an almost orgiastic unison fortissimo at the words, The heav'nly spheres make music with us, / The Holy Twelve dance with us, / All things join in the dance!
When The Hymn of Jesus was first performed, Vaughan Williams said, "It hasn't been done before, and it couldn't be done again.... If anyone doesn't like The Hymn of Jesus, he doesn't like life." And this, remember, was coming from a man who called himself an atheist! But he was right. All of Holst's music is remarkable in some way or other, but with The Hymn of Jesus he truly went above and beyond. And nothing quite like it, as far as I know, has ever been written again.
All of this music is somewhat better known in Britain than in Europe or the Americas. But even so, you can count the number of recordings some of these works have received on the fingers of one hand! Anyway, seek them out, and be prepared to be intrigued by the unusual uses Holst could make of 5-beat in a bar time.
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