There are many composers who are widely known for just a single work. In the case of Gustav Holst, that work – The Planets – is a big-budget Technicolor blockbuster. Its wide success proved to be a mixed blessing; Holst hated the celebrity and turned down honours and countless interview requests. He never went on to replicate its success.
Holst was born in Cheltenham on 21st September 1874 to musical parents, a Swedish father and an English mother. He studied piano and violin but neuritis in his right arm made playing the piano difficult (this is the reason he conducted left-handed). He had weak eyesight and was later rejected as unfit for military service in the Great War. Young Gustav took up the trombone, his father believing it may help with his asthma. Gustav was determined to pursue composition and studied at the Royal College of Music with Charles Villiers Stanford. Holst became greatly enamoured with the music of Richard Wagner and would insert wisps of it into his music; Stanford disapproved, “It won’t do, me boy; it won’t do.”
While at the RCM, Holst met fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams and they became lifelong friends, sharing a fascination for folk song – the two would go on rambling holidays to collect folk songs, which each would use in their music. They would also critique each other’s work. In 1949, RVW wrote that “Holst declared that his music was influenced by that of his friend: the converse is certainly true.”
Holst played the trombone in the Carl Rosa Opera Company and was its répétiteur. He made a modest income, living frugally. Eventually he became a teacher, Director of Music at St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith from 1905 until his death, and DM at Morley College. He was a keen traveller and had wide interests, particularly in Hindu literature. He studied Sanskrit and astrology, the first informing his opera Sāvitri, the latter finding an outlet in his greatest work, The Planets.
1The Planets
Holst became interested in astrology and in his suite The Planets (“Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra” was its working title), he ascribed a different character to each planet. Thus Mars is the “Bringer of War” (composed in menacing 5/4 metre as the First World War was raging), Venus the “Bringer of Peace” and so forth. But Holst didn’t conceive this as programme music in the style of Strauss’ tone poems. “These pieces were suggested by the astrological significance of the planets; there is no programme music. Neither have they any connection with the deities of classical mythology bearing the same names. If any guide to the music is required, the subtitle to each piece will be found sufficient.”
2Egdon Heath
Commissioned by the New York Symphony Orchestra to write a symphony, Holst came up with something entirely different, an evocative tone poem subtitled “A Homage to Thomas Hardy”. It takes its Egdon Heath title from Hardy’s fictional Wessex heath that features in his novel The Return of the Native. Holst was a great admirer of the author and walked with him on heathlands in Dorset. Holst prefaced this restless, sometimes austere score with a quotation from the novel, which includes the description of the place as “singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony”. It is, in many ways, Holst’s most daring, modernist work.
3Beni Mora
Holst was a keen traveller and it was in Algeria that he was inspired to write his oriental suite Beni Mora, incorporating music he heard in the streets. The three-movement suite concludes with In the Street of the Ouled Naïls, a solo flute plays an eight-note motif, which is repeated an astonishing 163 times. Vaughan Williams wrote of Beni Mora, “if it had been played in Paris rather than London it would have given its composer a European reputation, and played in Italy would probably have caused a riot.”
4St Paul’s Suite
This charming string suite was composed for the student orchestra at St Paul’s Girls’ School where Holst taught. It opens with a lively jig that alternates between 6/8 and 9/8 metre. It reveals his love of folk song, particularly in the finale which juxtaposes the Dargason with Greensleeves – the same Tudor tune that Vaughan Williams was later to weave into his opera Sir John in Love.
5In the Bleak Midwinter
There are several musical settings of Christina Rosetti’s Christmas poem, the most popular being the carols by Holst and Harold Darke. Holst's setting, “Cranham” (named after the Gloucestershire village where Holst lived when he composed it), is a hymn tune for congregational singing. It was written in 1906 at the express wish of Vaughan Williams, who was the editor of The English Hymnal. The composer’s daughter Imogen Holst wrote that “the critical mind may reject In the Bleak Midwinter as sentimental, but the carol singer finds it entirely satisfactory.”
6The Hymn of Jesus
Written in 1917, The Hymn of Jesus was one of Holst’s most widely performed works, scoring a great success at its 1920 premiere. Vaughan Williams, its dedicatee, said he just “wanted to get up and embrace everyone and then get drunk”. The work is very much Holst’s spiritual response to the First World War in which RVW had served, but Holst had been denied participation on medical grounds. During five months of 1916, over two million people were slaughtered, including Holst’s friend, the composer George Butterworth. Holst translated the text from the original Greek himself.
7Sāvitri
Holst’s one-act chamber opera is based on a Sanskrit tale from the Mahabharata, written to his own libretto. Death claims Sāvitri’s husband, Satyavān. Alone, she welcomes Death, who is moved to compassion and offers her anything short of her husband’s return. Sāvitri asks for life in all its fullness, which Death grants, but Sāvitri tells him that life is impossible without Satyavān. Death is defeated. It’s an evocative work, Holst bringing Eastern culture to Western musical traditions, a strange forerunner in many ways of Britten’s Curlew River.
8The Cloud Messenger
Holst’s sumptuous, late Romantic choral ode The Cloud Messenger was based on a love poem by the 8th-century Hindu poet, Kālidāsa. A servant has been dismissed from the services of his master for a misdemeanour. Working in a faraway field, he sees a cloud passing overhead and wishing it to take a message of undying love to his wife.
9Brook Green Suite
Written in hospital just a year before his death, Holst composed the Brook Green Suite for the junior string orchestra of St Paul’s Girls’ School, located by Brook Green in Hammersmith. He wanted to write something that was easy enough for the younger girls to play. The sunny opening movement features upper strings playing in unison, while the finale was based on a melody Holst heard in Sicily.
10Japanese Suite
The Japanese Suite was written for the dancer Michio Itō, who had moved to London on the outbreak of the First World War. He was to make an appearance at the London Coliseum and wanted music based on ancient Japanese melodies. Holst did not know any, so Ito whistled some to him and Holst jotted them down and orchestrated them.
