Gustav Holst

English classical composer, ethnomusicologist

• Born: September 21, 1874
• Birthplace: Cheltenham, England
• Died: May 25, 1934
• Place of death: London, England

Holst was a prolific composer, best known for his seven-movement orchestral suite The Planets. He also was significant for preserving British folk music and composing serious music for bands.

The Life

Gustavus Theodore von Holst (GEW-stahv holst) was the first of two children born to Adolph von Holst, a music teacher, and his wife Clara, an amateur musician who died when Holst was eight years old. Holst suffered from neuritis, a nerve inflammation that hampered his studies of violin and piano. He began to compose while in grammar school and eventually studied at Oxford and the Royal College of Music.

In 1895 Holst met Ralph Vaughan Williams, another Royal College of Music student, who became his closest musical friend and ally. The two composers developed a lifelong tradition of playing their new scores for each other and providing earnest feedback. Still suffering from crippling neuritis, Holst switched to trombone, which he played professionally for a short time.

Holst failed in his first attempts to make a living as a composer, so he turned to teaching. In 1905 he became musical director at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, in Hammersmith, a post he retained for the remainder of his career, while also teaching at Morley College in London, University College, Reading, and the Royal College of Music.

Holst’s compositions became better known, eliciting conducting engagements, including 1911 performances at Queen’s Hall in London. As World War I began and it became popular to support British composers, Holst was completing his masterpiece, the large orchestral suite The Planets. At the same time, in response to anti-German sentiment, Holst dropped the “von” that had been spuriously added to the family name only two generations earlier. His career flourished in the second half of the decade.

In 1923 a fall from a conductor’s podium weakened Holst’s fragile constitution. In 1932, despite his poor health, Holst accepted an invitation to lecture at Harvard University, and he never recovered from his exhausting schedule in the United States. In 1934, just short of his sixtieth birthday, Holst, weakened by ulcer surgery, died of a heart attack. His ashes rest at the cathedral in Chichester.

The Music

Holst was a prolific composer, though few of his works remain in the repertoire. His operas, for example, are rarely revisited, except for a ballet suite from The Perfect Fool. While his early works were influenced by the music of Maurice Ravel, Richard Strauss, and Richard Wagner, Holst gradually developed a more individual style as he became increasingly interested in setting folk melodies and incorporating folk modality. His harmonic language and asymmetrical meters, while not as challenging as those of Igor Stravinsky or Anton von Webern, were bold for a British composer, and he often found resistance in domestic audiences.

Early Works. Several of Holst’s student compositions won prizes, and when he was seventeen, his father arranged for three of his works to receive public performances. In 1905 Holst completed The Mystic Trumpeter for soprano and orchestra, mostly Wagnerian in its chromaticism, with hints of the polytonality that Holst would employ more extensively in later works. His interest in folk songs brought the use of modes into his composing, and his awareness of current trends on the Continent brought him additional compositional resources. Holst had studied Sanskrit in London, and several of his early works reflected the influence of Hindu philosophy and religion, in particular the series of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda that he set between 1907 and 1912.

Saint Paul’s Suite. Holst composed the four-movement Saint Paul’s Suite to fit the abilities of the young string players in St. Paul’s school. The work evinces the influence of folk melody on his music of this period. Holst would later produce other educational works, including Brook Green Suite, composed for the school orchestra in 1933.

Band Music. In 1909 Holst composed his Suite in E-flat Major for military band. This three-movement suite, based on a single theme, gave the band its first serious composition that was not an opera or orchestral transcription, beginning a lifelong relationship between Holst and band musicians. The Suite in F Major that followed two years later challenged the musicians with mixed-meter syncopation. Two more band works entered the repertoire in 1928: A Moorside Suite and Fugue à la Gigue. In 1930 the BBC Military Band commissioned Holst to write Hammersmith, which, like his other band works, is still in the standard repertoire of bands around the world.

The Planets. Always interested in astrology, Holst began in 1914 to compose his seven-movement astrological suite, The Planets. What is considered Holst’s masterpiece reflects the influence of the important and controversial composers of the time, Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. Familiar sections of The Planets range from the relentless militaristic march of “Mars, Bringer of War,” with its asymmetrical five-beat meter, to the famous hymn from “Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity.” The huge orchestration of The Planets (even requiring double timpanists) was capped by the use of an offstage wordless chorus fade-out at the end of “Neptune, the Mystic.” As famous as The Planets has become, however, it was never Holst’s favorite.

Egdon Heath. In May, 1927, Holst received a commission from the New York Symphony Orchestra, and he chose to dedicate the new piece to the author Thomas Hardy. After visiting Hardy, Holst was inspired to write what he considered his best composition. At the time, audience and critical opinion of the tone poem did not match Holst’s high opinion, and the piece languished.

Musical Legacy

While Holst’s musical legacy is perpetuated primarily by the quality of his compositions, he was also significant for preserving British folk song and composing serious band music. He also helped perpetuate the memory of earlier great British composers, arranging, in 1911, for the first performance since 1697 of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (1692). Holst’s work as a music educator affected generations of young students of all abilities, notably American composer Elliott Carter, with whom he worked at Harvard University. Holst was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society and was a fellow of the Royal College of Music. Along with these honors and accomplishments, Holst is remembered for his most famous orchestral composition, The Planets.

Principal Works

ballets (music): The Lure, 1921; The Golden Goose, Op. 45, No. 1, 1926 (choral ballet; scenario by Jane Marian Joseph); The Morning of the Year, Op. 45, No. 2, 1927 (choral ballet).

chamber works: String Trio in G Minor, composed 1894, first performed 1984; Fantasiestücke, Op. 2, 1896 (for oboe and string quartet); Quintet in A Minor, Op. 3, 1896 (for piano and wind instruments); Wind Quintet in A-Flat, Op. 14, composed 1903, first performed 1982; Two Songs Without Words, Op. 22, 1906; Seven Scottish Airs, 1907 (for strings and piano); Terzetto, 1926 (for flute, oboe, and viola); Lyric Movement, 1934 (for viola and chamber orchestra); Fantasia on Hampshire Folksongs, 1970 (for string orchestra; arranged by Imogen Holst; based on Gustav Holst’s Phantasy).

choral works:Short Partsongs, 1896 (for female chorus); Clear and Cool, Op. 5, 1897; Autumn Song, 1899 (for female chorus); Five Partsongs, Op. 9a, 1900; Ave Maria, Op. 9b, 1901 (for female chorus); Five Partsongs, Op. 12, 1903; King Estmere, Op. 17, 1903; Thou Didst Delight My Eyes, 1904; Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead, 1905 (for female chorus); Songs from “The Princess,” Op. 20a, 1905 (for female chorus; based on Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem); Four Old English Carols, Op. 20b, 1907 (for chorus and piano); In Youth Is Pleasure, 1908 (based on Robert Wever’s poem); Pastoral, 1908 (for female chorus); A Welcome Song, 1908 (for chorus, oboe, and cello); O England My Country, 1909; The Cloud Messenger, Op. 30, 1910; Four Partsongs, 1910 (for female chorus and piano; lyrics by John Greenleaf Whittier); Hecuba’s Lament, Op. 31, No. 1, 1911; Incidental Music to a London Pageant, 1911 (for military band and chorus); Two Eastern Pictures, 1911 (for female chorus and harp); Two Psalms, 1912 (for chorus, strings, and organ); The Homecoming, 1913 (for male chorus; lyrics by Thomas Hardy); Hymn to Dionysus, Op. 31, No. 2, 1913; The Swallow Leaves Her Nest, 1913; Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, Op. 26, 1914; Nunc dimittis, 1915 (for chorus and eight voices); Bring Us in Good Ale, Op. 34, No. 4, 1916; Lullay My Liking, Op. 34, No. 2, 1916 (for soprano and chorus); Of One That Is So Fair, Op. 34, No. 3, 1916 (for chorus and four voices); Terly Terlow, 1916 (for chorus, oboe, and cello); This Have I Done for My True Love, Op. 34, No. 1, 1916; Three Festival Choruses, Op. 36a, 1916; Two Carols, 1916 (for chorus, oboe, and cello); Diverus and Lazarus, 1917; A Dream of Christmas, 1917 (for female chorus and strings or piano); The Hymn of Jesus, Op. 37, 1917 (for two choruses, female semichorus, and orchestra); Two Partsongs, 1917 (for female chorus, two voices, and piano; lyrics by Whittier); Ode to Death, Op. 38, 1919; Short Festival Te Deum, 1919; Seven Choruses from Alcestis, 1920 (for chorus, harp, and three flutes; based on Euripides’ play); First Choral Symphony, Op. 41, 1924; The Evening-Watch, Op. 43, No. 1, 1925 (lyrics by Henry Vaughan); Sing Me the Men, Op. 43, No. 2, 1925 (lyrics by Digby Mackworth Dolben); Two Motets, Op. 43, 1925; Seven Partsongs, Op. 44, 1926; Two Anthems, 1927 (for chorus, organ, and bells); Twelve Songs, Op. 48, 1929 (for chorus and piano); A Choral Fantasia, Op. 51, 1930; Wassail Song, 1930; Eight Canons, 1931 (for chorus and piano); Twelve Welsh Folk Songs, 1931.

operas (music): The Revoke, 1895 (libretto by Fritz B. Hart); The Idea, 1898 (children’s operetta; libretto by Hart); The Youth’s Choice, 1902 (libretto by Holst); Sita, Op. 23, 1906 (based on the poem “The Rāmāyaṇa”); The Vision of Dame Christian, Op. 27a, 1909 (masque); Savitri, Op. 25, 1916 (based on the epic The Mahabharata); The Perfect Fool, Op. 39, 1923; At the Boar’s Head, Op. 42, 1925 (based on William Shakespeare’s play Henry IV); The Wandering Scholar, Op. 50, 1934 (libretto by Clifford Bax).

orchestral works:A Winter Idyll, composed 1897, first performed 1983; Walt Whitman Overture, Op. 7, composed 1899, first performed 1982; Symphony in F Major, Op. 8, 1900 (The Cotswolds); Indra, Op. 13, 1903 (symphonic poem); A Song of the Night, Op. 19, No. 1, composed 1905, first performed 1984; Songs of the West, Op. 21, No. 1, 1907; Stepney Children’s Pageant, Op. 27b, 1909; Suite in E-flat Major, Op. 28, No. 1, 1909 (for military band); A Somerset Rhapsody, Op. 21, No. 2, 1910; Invocation, Op. 19, No. 2, 1911 (for cello and orchestra); Suite in F Major, Op. 28, No. 2, composed 1911, first performed 1922 (for military band); Beni Mora, Op. 29, No. 1, 1912 (oriental suite); Saint Paul’s Suite, Op. 29, No. 2, 1913 (for strings); Japanese Suite, Op. 33, 1916; The Planets, Op. 32, 1918; A Fugal Concerto, Op. 40, No. 2, 1923 (for flute, oboe, and strings); A Fugal Overture, Op. 40, No. 1, 1923; Egdon Heath, Op. 47, 1928; Fugue à la Gigue, 1928 (for brass band); A Moorside Suite, 1928 (for brass band); Hammersmith, 1930 (for brass band); Double Concerto, Op. 49, 1930 (for two violins and orchestra); Brook Green Suite, 1934 (for strings); Scherzo, 1935.

piano works: Toccata, 1924; Chrissemas Day in the Morning, Op. 46, No. 1, 1926 (for solo piano); Two Folk Song Fragments, Op. 46, No. 2, 1927; Nocturne, 1930; Jig, 1932.

vocal works:Örnulf’s Drapa, Op. 6, 1898 (for baritone and orchestra); The Mystic Trumpeter, Op. 18, 1905 (scena for soprano and orchestra; based on Walt Whitman’s poem From Noon to Starry Night); The Heart Worships, 1907 (song for voice and piano); Hymns from the Rig Veda, Op. 24, 1908 (for voice and piano); Four Songs, Op. 35, 1917 (for soprano or tenor and violin).

Bibliography

Holmes, Paul. Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers—Holst: His Life and Times. London: Omnibus Press, 1997. Holmes’s volume includes portions of Imogen Holst’s biography of her father, as well as materials from Michael Short’s Holst biography. Illustrations, bibliography, discography.

Holst, Imogen. Gustav Holst: A Biography. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1988. Holst’s only child, Imogen, was also a composer and conductor. She served as Benjamin Britten’s assistant before retiring to devote her time to cataloging her father’s music.

Short, Michael. Gustav Holst: The Man and His Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1990. Short studied Holst’s diaries and letters and worked with his daughter Imogen to create a definitive picture of her father. Analysis, references.