m that Love her, most Great to them that Know. We may not count her Armies. We may not see her King. Her Fortress is a faithful Heart; her Pride is Suffering. And Soul by Soul and silently, her shining Bounds increase And her ways are ways of Gentleness and all her paths are Peace! We may not count her Armies. We may not see her King. Her Fortress is a faithful Heart; her Pride is Suffering. And Soul by Soul and silently, her shining Bounds increase And her ways are ways of Gentleness and all her paths are Peace!Bodine 5The fifth movement, Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age has a slow, calm, and quiet melody, restful in its lethargy. Saturn represents old age and our mortality very effectively. The opening is made to plod along tragically slowly, as if there is nothing left but to wait for death to come. The music builds to a stern climax that breaks off suddenly to the skeletal discordant bell-tolls as death arrives. This fades leaving us temporarily in an eerie stopover world. Suddenly the mood is transformed as the listener is now taken to an ethereal and magical 'heaven'. Holst is clearly making a spiritual statement in Saturn about the process of death and the certainty of a 'heaven' (he may have thought more of a cosmical union perhaps). Within the magical heaven, very deep bass tones from the organ are giving a solid floor to the sound, and we become aware (when listening spiritually) of the presence of some great 'being', whose universe we've now entered. Just a few bars from the end, the deep organ pedal is raised by a perfect fifth - a tremendously spiritual moment which for the listener is like a brief vision of God. Serene and deliberate are the words best describing the tone of this piece. We can hear Saturn coming in from a long ways off, with a steady yet plodding gait and with a steady yet plodding gait he comes, as surely as the frost and winter follow upon the summer, as surely as the evening follows the afternoo...
