Neptune from the suite The planets : for organ duet Organ - Sheet Music

Anonymous

Holst's handwritten score (Neptune) organ duet

I was somewhat surprised when the score finally arrived (in France) from the US, as I hadn't realised that it would be a real fascimile copy of the composer's handwritten score. I had been planning to use the score to play from but it isn't really practicable for that (difficult to read, abbreviations of repeated motifs etc...). It would be better if Sheetmusicplus enabled customers to view the score before making the purchase to avoid this kind of surprise. In the end, I still find the score useful as, with careful analysis, it shows what Holst had in mind for this organ duet version. Holst's suggested registrations are shown. So it will be useful as a reference, but I will have to make my own score of the piece to perform from. A reasonable reference for performance requirements is the Peter Sykes transcription of The Planets (all 7 movements), but I see that Sykes' score of Neptune does not follow exactly what Holst wrote in his organ version.