Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity

I fell in love with Jupiter at Interlochen.  Not the planet but the music.  In elementary school I loved learning about the planets in our solar system.  In college I became fascinated with a very bright "star" in the winter sky that I didn't remember seeing before.  Friends who were taking astronomy told me it was Jupiter.  When I took astronomy myself I got to see some of the planets through the telescope - it was unreal to see Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons.  So I have had a fascination with Jupiter for a long time, but it wasn't until my first year out of college that a friend introduced me to Gustav Holst's The Planets, an orchestral suite in which each of the movements is named after a planet.  Even then, I didn't fall in love with Jupiter until I started working at Interlochen Center for the Arts in the summer of 1992.

Interlochen is best known for music, though I was there working in the theatre department.  Located on a lake in Michigan, not far from Traverse City, Interlochen is the home of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra and a camp for the arts where hundreds of young people come each summer to immerse themselves in the study and practice of music, dance, visual arts, and drama.  Scattered throughout the trees of the Interlochen campus are tiny wooden cabins used for music practice.  As you walk around camp, you hear the sounds of tuning and scales:  flutes, oboes, and violins, trumpets, guitars, and clarinets.  Bathrooms are just about the only rooms that don't contain a piano.  Staff housing is in a dorm with practice rooms in the basement.  My first year I got to listen to tuba practice quite often.  Tubas are really more interesting when surrounded by the rest of the orchestra.  Each morning we woke to Reveille being played to wake the campers and each evening we heard Taps as the camp quietened down for sleep.

 I was the stage manager for the ten-day play which rehearsed and performed in Grunow, a small theatre that overlooked the lake.  Each morning, dressed in my required uniform of light blue shirt and navy blue shorts or corduroy knickers, I walked past the Bowl, a giant outdoor auditorium where some of the orchestras rehearsed, on my way to rehearsal.  On those cool northern mornings with low humidity and blue true dreams of skies, breezes dancing off the lake and through the leaves of the hardwood trees, I fell in love with Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.  Each summer I was there one of the orchestras practiced it in the early morning hours in the Bowl.  Big brass fanfares and the hymn in the middle and the rousing finale.  It is such a cheerful, happy, uplifting piece of music.  It never fails to bring a smile to my face and joy to my heart.  My first year I actually stumbled upon the performance of the piece in one of the main concert halls and was thrilled at the serendipity of witnessing the concert version of the piece I had grown to love. 

Recently I attended a service at St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton.  As the organist began the prelude, I was instantly transformed back to Interlochen.  It took me a moment, at first I thought it might be the Widor Toccata, another favorite piece that I had heard during my summers there.  But no, this was too gentle, couldn't be the Toccata.  In an instant I knew.  It was the hymn section of Jupiter.  Memories rushed back to me of summers by the lake, canoe trips with the staff, long conversations around fires at the bluff where the faculty lived in small cabins, rehearsals with brilliant young actors, and always, always the music.  Memories with a soundtrack.  Each Sunday night the World Youth Symphony Orchestra performed in Kresge Auditorium, a covered but open air venue with glass windows behind the stage that overlooked the lake so you could watch the rippling of the water as the orchestra played.  Hearing that Jupiter hymn was like being wrapped in a soft blanket of some of my favorite memories.  A hug from God.

If you aren't familiar with it, treat yourself to The Planets by Gustav Holst.  And when you listen to Jupiter, think of me, and smile with joy.