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Gustav Holst (September 21,
1874, Cheltenham,
Gloucestershire - May 25, 1934,
London) was an English composer
and was a music teacher for
over 20 years. Holst is most
famous for his orchestral suite
The Planets. Having studied at
the Royal College of Music in
London, his early work was
influenced by Ravel, Grieg,
Richard Strauss, and Ralph
Vaughan Williams, but most of
his music is highly original,
with influences from Hindu
spiritualism and English folk
tunes. Holst's music is well
known for unconventional use of
metre and haunting
melodies.
Gustav Holst wrote almost 200
catalogued compositions,
including orchestral suites,
operas, ballets, concertos,
choral hymns, and songs. (See
Selected works, below).
Holst became music master at St
Paul's Girls' School in 1905
and also director of music at
Morley College in 1907,
continuing in both posts until
retirement (as detailed
below).
He was the brother of Hollywood
actor Ernest Cossart, and
father of the composer and
conductor Imogen Holst, who
wrote a biography of her father
in 1938.
 Name
He was originally named
Gustavus Theodor von Holst but
he dropped the von from his
name in response to anti-German
sentiment in Britain during
World War I, making it official
by deed poll in 1918.
Early
life
He was born in 1874 in
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire,
England to a family of Swedish
extraction (by way of Latvia
and Russia), and was educated
at Cheltenham Grammar School
for Boys.
Holst's grandfather, Gustavus
von Holst of Riga, Latvia, a
composer of elegant harp music,
moved to England, becoming a
notable harp teacher. Holst's
father Adolph Holst, an
organist, pianist, and
choirmaster, taught piano
lessons and gave recitals; and
his mother, Clara von Holst,
who died when Gustav was eight,
was a singer. As a frail child
whose early recollections were
musical, Holst had been taught
to play piano and violin, and
began composing when he was
about twelve.
Holst's father was the organist
at All Saints' Church in
Pittville, and his childhood
home is now a small museum,
devoted partly to Holst, and
partly to illustrating local
domestic life of the mid-19th
century.
Holst grew up in the world of
Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells,
George Bernard Shaw, Arthur
Conan Doyle, Gauguin, Monet,
Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and
Puccini. Both he and his sister
learned piano from an early
age, but Holst, stricken with a
nerve condition that affected
the movement of his right hand
in adolescence, gave up the
piano for the trombone, which
was less painful to play.
He attended the newly relocated
Royal College of Music in
London on a scholarship,
studying with Charles V.
Stanford, and there in 1895, he
met fellow student and lifelong
friend Ralph Vaughan Williams,
whose own music was, for the
most part, quite different from
Holst’s, but whose praise for
his work was abundant and who
later shared an interest in
Holst teaching the English
vocal and choral tradition
(folk song, madrigals, and
church music).
Holst was influenced during
these years by socialism, and
attended lectures and speeches
by George Bernard Shaw, with
whom he shared a passion for
vegetarianism, and by William
Morris, both of whom were among
the UK's most outspoken
supporters of the socialist
movement in the UK.
It was also during these years
that Holst became interested in
Hindu mysticism and
spirituality, and this interest
was to influence his later
works, including Sita
(1899–1906, a three-act opera
based on an episode in the
Ramayana), Sāvitri, a chamber
opera based on a tale from the
Mahabharata, and Hymns from the
Rig Veda, in preparation for
which he taught himself basic
Sanskrit to avoid reliance on
the ‘substandard’ translations
of the day.
To earn a living in the era
before he had a satisfactory
income from his compositions,
he played the trombone in the
Carl Rosa Opera Company and in
a popular orchestra called the
'White Viennese Band',
conducted by Stanislas Wurm.
The music was cheap and
repetitive and not to Holst's
liking, and he referred to this
kind of work as 'worming' and
regarded it as 'criminal'.
Fortunately his need to 'worm'
came to an end as his
compositions became more
successful, and his income was
given stability by his teaching
posts.
During these early years, he
was influenced greatly by the
poetry of Walt Whitman, as were
many of his contemporaries, and
set his words in The Mystic
Trumpeter (1904). He also set
to music poetry by Thomas Hardy
and Robert Bridges.
Musical
career
In 1905, Holst was appointed
Director of Music at St Paul's
Girls' School in Hammersmith,
London, where he composed the
successful and still popular St
Paul's Suite for the school
orchestra in 1913. In 1907,
Holst also became director of
music at Morley College. Those
two leadership positions were
the most important of his
teaching posts, and he retained
both posts until the end of his
life.
During the first two decades of
the 20th century, musical
society as a whole, and Holst's
friend Vaughan Williams in
particular, became interested
in old English folksongs,
madrigal singers, and Tudor
composers. Holst shared in his
friend’s admiration for the
simplicity and economy of these
melodies, and their use in his
compositions is one of his
music’s most recognizable
features.
Holst was an avid rambler. He
walked extensively in Italy and
France, and had covered nearly
every path in England by the
time of his death. He also
travelled outside the bounds of
Europe, heading to
French-controlled Algeria in
1906 on doctor's orders as a
treatment for asthma and the
depression that crippled him
after his submission failed to
win the Ricordi Prize, a
coveted award for composition.
His travels in the Arab and
Berber land, including an
extensive bicycle tour of the
Algerian Sahara, inspired the
suite Beni Mora, written upon
his return.
After the lukewarm reception of
his choral work The Cloud
Messenger in 1912, Holst was
again off travelling, financing
a trip with fellow composers
Balfour Gardiner and brothers
Clifford Bax and Arnold Bax to
Spain, with funds from an
anonymous donation. Despite
being shy, Holst was fascinated
by people and society, and had
always believed that the best
way to learn about a city was
to get lost in it. In Gerona,
Catalonia, he often
disappeared, only to be found
hours later by his friends
having abstract debates with
local musicians. It was in
Spain that Clifford Bax
introduced Holst to astrology,
a hobby that was to inspire the
later Planets suite. He read
astrological fortunes until his
death, and called his interest
in the stars his "pet
vice."
Shortly after his return, St
Paul’s Girls School opened a
new music wing, and Holst
composed St Paul’s Suite for
the occasion. At around this
time (1913), Stravinsky
premiered the Rite of Spring,
sparking riots in Paris and
caustic criticism in London. A
year later, Holst first heard
Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for
Orchestra, an ‘ultra-modern’
set of five movements employing
‘extreme chromaticism’ (the
consistent use of all 12
musical notes). Holst would
have certainly been affected by
the performance and, although
he had earlier lampooned the
stranger aspects of modern
music (he had a strong sense of
humour), the new music of
Stravinsky and Schoenberg
influenced, if not initially
spurred, his work on The
Planets.
Holst's compositions for wind
band, though relatively small
in number, guaranteed him a
position as the medium's
cornerstone, as seen in
innumerable present-day
programmes featuring his two
Suites for Military Band. His
one work for brass band, A
Moorside Suite, remains an
important part of the brass
band repertoire.
The
Planets
Holst and wife Isobel bought a
cottage in Thaxted, Essex and,
surrounded by medieval
buildings and ample rambling
opportunities, he started work
on the suite that would become
his best known work, the
orchestral suite The Planets.
It was meant to be a series of
‘mood pictures’ rather than
anything concretely connected
with astrology or astronomy,
though Holst was known to have
been using the book What Is A
Horoscope by Alan Leo as a
guide:
Mars – Independent, Ambitious,
Headstrong
Venus – Awakens Affection and
Emotion
Mercury – The ‘Winged Messenger
of the Gods’, Resourceful,
Adaptable
Jupiter – Brings Abundance,
Perseverance
Holst was also influenced by a
19th-century astrologer called
Raphael, whose book concerning
the planets' role in world
affairs led Holst to develop
the grand vision of the planets
that made The Planets suite
such an enduring success.
The work was finished in two
stages, with Mars, Venus and
Jupiter written at one time,
and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and
Mercury written after a break
that Holst had taken to work on
other pieces. The work was
finished in 1916. The influence
of Stravinsky was picked up by
a critic who called it ‘the
English Le Sacre du Printemps
(Rite of Spring)’.
The first of the seven pieces
is Mars, ‘the most ferocious
piece of music in existence’,
evoking a battle scene of
immense proportion with its
signature 5/4 metre (it changes
to 5/2 and 3/4 at the end) and
blatant dissonance. Holst
directed that it be played
slightly faster than a regular
march, giving it a mechanized
and inhuman character. It is
often a surprise to learn that
Mars was actually finished just
before the horrors of World War
I. Mars is easily Holst’s most
famous piece, and has been
quoted in everything from Carl
Sagan’s Cosmos to video
games.
Calm Venus and self-satisfied
Jupiter, both also quite well
known, demonstrate influence
from Vaughan Williams,
Stravinsky, Elgar and
Schoenberg.
Uranus at first appears to be a
quirky and frenetic homage to
Dukas’s The Sorcerer's
Apprentice, but Holst did not
know the Frenchman's score at
the time. Neptune is mysterious
and evokes an other-worldly
scene.
Most original is Saturn, in
which 'a threatening clock
ticks inexorably as the
bassline, revealing both the
dignity and frailties of old
age'. Saturn was reputedly
Holst's favourite of the seven
movements.
Holst lived to see the
discovery of Pluto in 1930.
Although it was immediately
accepted as a planet, Holst
chose not to add Pluto to his
suite. He seems to have been
vindicated by the 2006 decision
by the International
Astronomical Union to downgrade
Pluto's planetary status to
that of dwarf planet. A piece
entitled "Pluto: The Renewer"
was composed by Colin Matthews
in 2000, and it has been
occasionally included in
performances of The
Planets.
Holst himself conducted the
London Symphony Orchestra in
the very first electrical
recording of The Planets, in
1926, for HMV. Although, as his
daughter Imogen noted, he
couldn't quite achieve the
gradual fade-out of women's
voices and orchestra he had
written (owing to the
limitations of early electrical
recording), it was a landmark
recording of the work. The
performance was later issued on
LP and CD format.
At the onset of World War I,
Holst tried to enlist but was
rejected because of his bad
eyes, bad lungs, and bad
digestion. In wartime England,
Holst was persuaded to drop the
‘von’ from his name, as it
aroused suspicion. His new
music, however, was readily
received, as ‘patriotic’ and
English music was demanded at
concert halls, partly due to a
ban on all ‘Teutonic’ music.
Towards the end of the war he
was offered a post within the
YMCA’s educational work
programme as Musical Director,
and he set off for Salonica
(present day Thessoliniki,
Greece) and Constantinople in
1918. While he was teaching
music to troops eager to escape
the drudgery of army life, The
Planets Suite was being
performed to audiences back
home. Shortly after his return
after the war’s end, Holst
composed Ode to Death, based
upon a poem by Walt
Whitman.
During the years 1920 – 1923,
Holst's popularity grew through
the success of The Planets and
The Hymn of Jesus (1917) (based
on the Apocryphal gospels), and
the publication of a new opera,
The Perfect Fool (a satire of a
work by Wagner). Holst became
something of 'an anomaly, a
famous English composer’, and
was busy with conducting,
lecturing, and teaching
obligations. He hated publicity
– he often refused to answer
questions posed by the press,
and when asked for his
autograph, handed out prepared
cards that read, “I do not hand
out my autograph”. Though he
may not have liked the
attention, he appreciated
having enough money for the
first time in his life. Always
frail, after a collapse in 1923
he retired from teaching to
devote the remaining (eleven)
years of his life to
composition.
Later
life
In the following years, he took
advantage of new technology to
publicize his work through
sound recordings and the BBC’s
‘wireless’ broadcasts. In 1927,
he was commissioned by the New
York Symphony Orchestra to
write a symphony. He took this
opportunity to work on an
orchestral piece based on
Thomas Hardy’s Wessex, a work
that would become Egdon Heath,
and which would be first
performed a month after Hardy’s
death, in his memory. By this
time, Holst was ‘going out of
fashion’, and the piece was
poorly reviewed. However, Holst
is said to have considered the
short, subdued but powerful
tone poem his greatest
masterpiece. The piece has been
much better received in recent
years, with several recordings
available.
Towards the end of his life, in
1930, Gustav Holst wrote Choral
Fantasia (1930), and he was
commissioned by the BBC to
write a piece for military
band: the resulting Hammersmith
was a tribute to the place
where he had spent most of his
life, a musical expression of
the London borough (of
Hammersmith), which begins with
an attempt to recreate the
haunting sound of the River
Thames sleepily flowing its
way.
Gustav Holst had a lifetime of
poor health worsened by a
concussion during a backward
fall from the conductor's
podium, from which he never
fully recovered. In his final 4
years, Holst grew ill with
stomach problems. One of his
last compositions, The Brook
Green Suite, named after the
land on which St Paul’s Girls’
School was built, was performed
for the first time a few months
before his death. He died of
complications following stomach
surgery, in London, on May 25,
1934. His ashes were interred
at Chichester Cathedral in West
Sussex, with Bishop George Bell
giving the memorial oration at
the funeral.
Source : Some
of the information on this page
came from a Wikipedia
article and is
licensed under the GNU
Documentation License.
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www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Gustav
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