"'Neptune' was the first piece of music to have a fade-out ending. Holst stipulates that the women's choruses are 'to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed', and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) is 'to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance.' Although commonplace today, the effect bewitched audiences in the era before widespread recorded sound. After the initial 1918 run-through, Holst's daughter Imogen remarked that the ending was 'unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women's voices growing fainter and fainter... until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence.'"
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