Gustav Holst

CHELTENHAM CHILDHOOD

Gustav Holst (originally named Gustavus Theodor von Holst) was born on September 21, 1874 in Cheltenham, at what was then known as 4 Pittville Terrace, Clarence Road, as the first of two children to Adolph and Clara von Holst. Today his birthplace is a museum in his memory, bearing a plaque unveiled in 1949 by his lifelong friend, composer Vaughan Williams. Holst's grandfather, Gustavus von Holst of Riga, Latvia, composer of elegant music for the harp, moved to England and became a fashionable harp teacher. Holst's father was an accomplished pianist and an organist at the All Saints' Church. Holst's mother, a singer, died soon after the birth of her second child, when Gustav was only eight. Holst's father's sister Nina was brought in to look after the children and in 1882 the family moved to 1 Vittoria Walk.

In 1885 Holst's father remarried and Holst was sent to Cheltenham Grammar School where his father taught music. Gustav was a very weak child - his eye sight was very bad, he suffered asthma and already in this young age he suffered neuritis in his hands which made his practising very painful.

Gustav Holst Birthplace Museum

In 1892 Holst composed a two-act operetta, called Lansdown Castle, the title of which refered to a tollgate in Gloucester Road which was produced at the Cheltenham Corn Exchange in the High Street the following year. Holst obtained his first professional engagement in 1893, when he served as an organist and choirmaster of St. Laurence at Wyck Rissington, a small Cotswold village. Soon afterwards he also became organist and choirmaster of the choral society at Bourton-on-the-Water but after a year he had to relinquish the post as his father sent him to the Royal College of Music.

STUDENT YEARS

As a student, Holst never drunk or smoked and also became a strict vegetarian. He was a great fan of Wagner and Bach. Realising he might not be able to play the piano at a high level due to severe neuritis in his right hand, he decided to take up the trombone. As an exercise, Holst would cycle or walk most of the way from College back home to Cheltenham with his trombone strapped over his back. It was in 1895 at the Royal College of Music where Holst met Ralph Vaughan Williams while they were students. The two remained lifelong friends, depending on one another for support and assistance, developing habit of playing sketches of their newest compositions to each other.

Under the guidance of his composition professor, Charles Stanford, Holst set to music a libretto written by Fritz Hart based on a card game episode in Beau Brummel. He called it The Revoke, but this Holst's first piece has never made a public performance. Holst was influenced by socialism during these years. He joined the Hammersmith Socialist Club and listened to Bernard Shaw's lectures. He conducted the Hammersmith Socialist Choir at William Morris' house in Hammersmith Mall where he fell in love with the youngest soprano whose name was Isobel Harrison. He also became interested in Hindu culture and philosophy. To better understand Hindu scriptures he learnt himself Sanskrt.

Gustav Holst by Bernard Munns, 1923

That is where he got the inspiration for his next work - opera Sita, on which he began to work in 1899. It is based on the Hindu epic Ramayana. Having worked on it until 1906 it was never performed in his lifetime as he failed to win a composition competition, the Ricordi Prize. Holst left college in 1898, playing the trombone in the Carl Rosa Opera Company and later Scottish Opera. In 1900, Holst wrote his Cotswold Symphony and in it was an elegy written in memory of William Morris. He also completed his Ave Maria, which was his first published piece. In 1903 he also wrote a symphonic poem titled Indra, which was a vivid portrait of the god, Indra, and his battle with the drought.

TEACHING CAREER

In 1901 Holst married Isobel and they set up a home in Sheppards Bush. Holst begun a successfull teaching career. He taught at the James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich for two years before being appointed Director of Music at St. Paul's Girls School in Hammersmith in 1905. He was asked to conduct his new large scale piece for soprano and orchestra, The Mystic Trumpeter, based on poetry by Walt Whitman, at Queens Hall. Holst was also teaching at the Morley College for Working Men and Women. Having had his opera Sita rejected, Holst fell into depression and together with perpetual overwork it left marks on his health. The doctor recommended a holiday in warm climate and Holst decided to go to Algeria. His Algerian experience gave him the inspiration for his next major work for orchestra, Beni Mora. His interest in India never faded and from 1908 to 1912, he wrote four sets of hymns from the Rig Veda, the Vedic Hymns for voice and piano, and the large scale choral work called The Cloud Messenger.

THE PLANETS

After the outbreak of the first world war Holst started to work on The Planets, his most famous work. It took him more than two years to write The Planets (1914-16), a work he never considered to be his best. The Planets, opus 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite, notable for its elaborate score for large orchestra with rare instruments. The Planets Suite has become the most-performed composition by an English composer. The suite has seven movements, each of which is named after a planet (and its corresponding Roman deity): Mars, the Bringer of War, Venus, the Bringer of Peace, Mercury, the Winged Messenger, Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age, Uranus, the Magician, and Neptune, the Mystic.

To Holst disappointment, he was declared unfit for active service in the Great War. His wife Isobel was driving lorry loads of wounded soldiers to the hospital, his friend Vaughan Williams was fighting in France and in the end even Holst got the chance to contribute by taking the post of Musical Organizer in the educational work among the troops in the Near East.

In 1923 he received a tremendous ovation after a performance of The Planets, but Holst yet again was deeply depressed, unable to sleep and on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown. Whilst conducting a rehearsal at University College, Reading, he slipped off the platform and fell back on his head. The concussion was fairly slight but it happened at an unfortunate time when Holst was already feeling depressed and overworked. Until his death in 1934 he never properly recovered from this accident. He gave up all his teaching and retreated to his holiday home in Thaxted. His next performance, the opera At the Boar's Head, failed because of the complexity of his music. His later works, such as the Choral Symphony (1923-4) and Egdon Heath (1927) for orchestra, which he believed to be his best, were found by critics and audiences alike to be bewildering and too 'cerebral' but Holst remained confident and unperturbed.

Gustav Holst

In the spring of 1927 the citizens of Cheltenham organized a Holst festival, two hours of music which included A Somerset Rhapsody which had not been performed in years and, of course, The Planets. The Birmingham Orchestra under the baton of Adrian Boult performed his works in the Town Hall. Holst was present despite his illness, and indeed managed to conduct The Planets himself. Afterwards he claimed that it was the most overwhelming event of his life.

In 1932 Holst was invited to lecture in composition at Harvard University but after a talk on his beloved Haydn at the Library of Congress in Washington, he was hospitalized with hemorrhagic gastritis caused by a duodenal ulcer. At the end of 1933, he entered a nursing-home and was given the choice of a minor operation and a restricted life afterwards or a major operation and the freedom to do what he liked. He chose the latter. The operation was successful but his heart was unable to take the strain. He died two days later on the 25th of May 1934. His ashes were interred at Chichester Cathedral in West Sussex, with Bishop George Bell giving the memorial oration at the funeral.

Imogen Holst, daughter of Gustav Holst, was a distinguished conductor, scholar, teacher and composer in her own right.