GUSTAV HOLST
A Personal Assessment
Dr David C F Wright
I do not know what to make to make of this composer.
I am worried that much of his music is so strongly
influenced by other composers that it may challenge his originality
or lack of it. Uranus from The Planets is clearly influenced by
Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Neptune is taken from the
final movement, Sirens, from Debussy's Nocturnes. Despite this,
there is some originality in Holst's work and it is an interesting
paradox that obvious influences do not cancel personal individuality.
The great Vaughan Williams was influenced by Holst. The motto
theme of his superlative Symphony no. 4 in F minor (a real masterpiece)
seems to step out of Uranus the magician. The opening of Vaughan
Williams' Symphony no. 5 in D is so similar to the opening of
Butterworth's orchestral rhapsody A Shropshire Lad.
It is curious that influences do not necessarily
make the composer who is influenced a lesser composer. It is said
that Mahler influenced Shostakovich, an idea that I cannot endorse.
However, Shostakovich is a far better composer than Mahler
There is a danger that Holst is regarded as a
one-work composer and that one work is The Planets but, I submit,
it is not his best work. I do not dispute that there are some
very fine moments in The Planets and it is a rare example of first-class
orchestration which may not be present in his other works. The
smaller works are better such as the engaging St Paul's Suite
and Egdon Heath which is his finest work. Some of his choral works
are worthy of attention. The Hymn of Jesus is a splendid work
but only if it is given a good performance.
His weakness is shown in his first work, a setting
of Horatius for chorus and orchestra dating from around 1887.
This was six years before he came to London to study with Stanford
at the Royal College of Music. All Holst knew was Berlioz's treatise
on instrumentation. His first work to be performed was Lansdowne
Castle given at the Cheltenham Corn Exchange on 7 February 1893.
It was described as an operetta and was a sort of send-up of Sullivan
and written for audience approval. He had had some lessons in
counterpoint in Oxford and the work is a combination of light-hearted
music and an attempt to be academically correct. As with many
young composers he wanted to be noticed and included in the score
are top Cs. He wanted to rebel against the theorist's law that
consecutive fifths were not allowed and so he used them. At one
point he instructs the choir to sing an ecclesiastical chant as
a magic incantation and to make a big crescendo through closed
lips which, of course, is absurd.
The audience were not
impressed and when Holst heard Bach's
B minor Mass at the Three Choirs Festival
in Worcester Cathedral in September
1893 he was not impressed with his work
either. He told Boult that the Sanctus
had a profound effect on him. He wrote
music that were mere imitations, Sullivan
and Grieg being his models and not the
best choices. Holst called them his
'Early Horrors'. Studying with Stanford
made him aware that all his music up
to that time was poor and juvenilia.
Gustav Theodore van Holst was born on 21 September
1874 at 4 Pitville Terrace, Cheltenham of a musical family. His
father was Adolph and his mother was born Clara Lediard. From
1887-91 he was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School. He was a
proficient pianist and in 1892 became the organist at Wyck Rissington
Church. In 1893 there was the performance of Lansdowne Castle
and on 12 April he conducted a choral society at Bourton on the
Water. In May he entered the Royal College of Music. It is a pity
that he gave up piano technique . This was due to neuritis, inflammation
of the nerves but it is true that Holst was never really robust.
The following year, 1895, he was awarded a scholarship to study
composition at RCM and several months later met Vaughan Williams.
He wrote a comic opera The Revoke which his called
his opus one but it was a disaster. Then he became impressed with
Wagner and for a decade was taken up with Tristan und Isolde one
of the greatest operas of all time and Wagner's masterpiece. Holst
lived and breathed Tristan and he tried to compose an opera, the
Magic Mirror but his passion for Wagner misled him. His chords
were too thick and turgid as one finds in the music of Elgar.
He realised the stupidity of this type of pompous music and struggled
for some time to let these weaknesses go.
Stanford was a remarkable teacher and was harsh
on Holst but it was needed. But Holst did not know which way to
turn. Sullivan and Wagner had inspired him and now he turned again
to Grieg and, under that influence, composed his Winter Idyll.
Holst had to be original and modern and to achieve
this he had a predilection for composing with many sevenths. This
idea that modern music is only modern because of 'discords' is
nonsense. Alun Hoddinott started his career with the same notion
as you can see in his Clarinet Concerto, Op. 3. The intervals
of seconds, sevenths and ninths should not be termed as discords.
They create tension in music and it must be remembered that the
great composers of the past used them to good effect.
Holst wrote Ornulf's Drapa for baritone and orchestra
a grim work which, again, shows compositional weaknesses. He strove
to be inspired and for a hero to worship and by 1898 was immersed
in the work of Ibsen, a natural progression from his infatuation
with Grieg. Unlike Schubert, Holst now began to take instruction
seriously. He had learned to play the trombone and took Stanford's
advice to stick to the rules.
He was now more settled. He was engaged to Isabel
Harrison, playing the trombone in the Scottish orchestra and for
the Carl Rosa opera company which he did until 1903.
In 1899 he composed his first important work,
the Walt Whitman Overture which he described as his opus 7. Clearly
he was impressed with Whitman's poetry as was Vaughan Williams
and others since. He also wrote his Suite de Ballet for orchestra
and was becoming more interested in country life, the real England,
and his Gloucestershire upbringing. The Cotswolds Symphony was
begun. It is autobiographical but it is difficult to follow his
thoughts in this work. The slow movement is an Elegy in memory
of William Morris which has an intensity that is quite moving
and prophetic of other works associated with death and gloom such
as Neptune from the Planets and Egdon Heath
Holst loved the company of girls and women and
it may be true to say that his best works were written for the
fairer sex. He enjoyed writing choral works for female voices
only. His first choral work of note is a setting of Ave Maria
for eight female voices. His association with girls' schools lead
to his Pastoral for three female voices and the Seven Part-songs
Op. 44 for three female voices. Two of his Four Choral Songs from
the Rig Veda are for female voices and is Hecuba's Lament and
the Hymn to Dionysus. Two of his major choral works, the Choral
Symphony and A Choral Fantasy both have one soloist, a soprano.
He wrote many part-songs which are nothing more
than exercises and his over-ambitious nature again mislead him
into an opera, The Youth's Choice. It was an absolute failure
and Holst would have done well to listen to Vaughan Williams's
advice. Holst had no idea about stage presence or arrangements.
What lead him to study Sanskrit at London University
is not clear to me but this lead to the exploration of the Bhagavad
Gita. He worked with great industry on translating the hymns from
the Rig Veda and the dramatic events in the Ramayana. He composed
a symphonic poem, Indra, with these influences in mind but it
is a poor work . He composed Invocation to the Dance for baritone
and piano, his first setting of a Sanskrit text but, again, it
is poor and the piano part is so un-original. It sounds like Chopin.
He married Isabel Harrison on 24 June 1901. They
had one child, Imogen Clare who was born on 12 April 1907 when
he was appointed director of music at Morley College for Working
Men and Women. He remained in this post until 1924.
It is considered that all serious composers write
a least one symphony and one concerto. Perhaps a violin concerto
was in his mind when he wrote A Song of the Night for violin and
orchestra. This, with many other pieces, was withdrawn as they
were very poor. But his style was changing.
His earliest important work was The Mystic Trumpeter
for soprano and orchestra with a text by Whitman. Here a new style
appears and there is a move away from chromaticism. Some of the
music is very powerful and reminds us of Mars from The Planets.
But death is present and it is this gloominess that some find
worrying in his music.
Of importance is the Five Tennyson Songs for
female voices. Here we find an integration of the vocal and piano
parts.
It was, perhaps, the influence of Vaughan Williams
that lead Holst to investigate folk song. His first venture into
this was in his orchestral work Songs of the West. His contribution
to Seven Scottish Airs for string orchestra with piano is merely
a string of tunes. The Two Songs without Words for orchestral
is very poor and weak. His not always knowing what he was doing
explains the quotes from Wagner.
Very serious compositional weakness is also found
in the Somerset Rhapsody for orchestra. He said so himself. As
part of the learning process he copied out motets by such composers
as Lassus and Victoria for the girls at St Paul's School, and
this is still an excellent way to learn. This lead him to compose
the Four Old English Carols, Op. 20B, which are worthy of attention.
The song A Babe is Born obviously influenced Britten but Holst's
setting is superior. There are some lovely moments.
His fascination with Sanskrit lead him to compose
the opera Sita. It was not a success and, quite frankly, it is
full or dreadful flaws. Holst even said that it was nothing more
than ' good old Wagner bawling', which is unfair on Wagner.
It was now 1906. He was 32 years of age. Most
of his work to date was very poor indeed. He had major technical
problems in composing which the professionals both recognise and
admit and, to be fair to Holst, so did he. By the age of 32, Purcell,
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had written masterpieces. So had Iain
Hamilton with many prizes and awards given to him for each of
his first five works.
In 1907 Holst began working on the Rig Veda.
He struggled with technical music problems and in 1908 wrote his
one-act opera Savitri which is his most successful work in this
genre. But Savitri represents death and gloom pervades the music.
The orchestra is large and some orchestration is very fine although
the first scene does not employ the orchestra. But his daughter,
Imogen, is reported as saying that good moments in this opera
are rare.
In 1905 Holst had become the director of music
at St Paul's Girls' School. Obviously, he had to compose less
challenging music for them than for professionals. As I have said
his best works are written with these girls in mind, which have
an enviable command of innocence. The Part-songs for children
to texts by Whittier have many flaws but the song The swallow
leaves her nest has an occasional poignancy.
His Suite in E flat for military band does not
work . It is traditional and somewhat banal. The Suite no. 2 in
F is based on folk tunes from Hampshire but there are still serious
problems in the music. Modulations are both awkward and ineffective
to give but one example.
A holiday in Algiers inspired his oriental suite
Beni Mora which is a successful piece. He shrugged on the shackles
of just writing well known tunes and ' borrowing' the styles of
others. To think that the inspiration was from listening to a
solo bamboo flute for two and a half hours is hard to assimilate.
Sir Malcolm Sargent liked the piece and discussed it at length
with some of us in his Kensington flat, complete with two grand
pianos!
Holst attempted another oriental piece with his
Japanese Suite.
There is a new departure in the Hymn to Dionysus
of 1913 for female voices and orchestra. He had obviously been
listening to Vaughan Williams for the sound world is more akin
to him than to Holst. There is also some influence from Ravel,
I think. But this impressionistic beauty and sensual music is,
to me, his best work and gives credence to my opening remarks
that a composer profoundly influenced by others can write original
music, however much a paradox that is.
Two works for the girls' school must be mentioned.
Seven Choruses from Alcestis for unison voices, three flutes and
harp are dramatic but weak in that his writing for the voices
is too high and does not take into account the change of register
for each voice. The accompaniment is sparse at times but there
are moments of drama. The St Paul's Suite for string orchestra
is a joy.
It is a success because
of its simplicity. The Jig is based
on Morris dancing themes, the Ostinato
is mercurial, the intermezzo has a melody
reused in The Perfect Fool and the finale
is the same, more or less, as the end
of the Suite in F.
In 1913 the new music
wing of the school was opened.
The Two Psalms for chorus, string orchestra and
organ has some telling moments. How refreshing to hear Alleluias
sung but not in the style of a town-crier. But gloom reappears
in the Dirge of Two Veterans for male voices, brass and percussion
to a text by Walt Whitman.
He was rejected for active war service due to
neuritis and eye trouble.
The Planets date from 1914 and 1917 and so much
has been written about them. I cannot add anything new. What is
generally not recognised is the clear influence of Stravinsky
and, with such a master behind him the prospect of success for
Holst is that very much greater. With World War One looming Holst
wrote Mars, the bringer of war, first. It is very powerful music
and, although Holst had strange religious views, his quote from
the Kyrie of Bach's B minor Mass is an obvious statement. Venus,
the bringer of peace, is clearly a desire for peace and there
may be something very personal in the crying oboe melody. Mercury,
the winged messenger, had a lightness of touch but suffers from
episodic changes which prevents the music being an integral whole.
Jupiter has become famous for the tune sung to I vow to thee my
country which, with Elgar's land of Hope and Glory, have been
nationalistic anthems but, although I may in the minority, both
tunes wallow in sentimentality and are nauseating sycophantic.
This is an important point because sentimentality in Holst is
almost non-existent. This is a fascinating fact and could produce
some lively debate. Saturn, the bringer of old age, is Holst's
gloom again such as you will find in Egdon Heath. Uranus, the
magician starts with violence and the composition is full of grotesque
clumsiness as Imogen said to us once. There is derision, irreverence
and tedious repetition. Despair returns in Neptune the Mystic
where the orchestra is directed to play pianissimo throughout,
as are the women's voices to be sempre pp.
Much of The Planets was written at long weekends
he spent in a cottage in Thaxted which had a choir which was devoted
to Bach. The local vicar was also a socialist. At Thaxted's Whitsun
Festivals, Holst would have girls from school and some Musicians
from Morley College to perform music. Some of this was his own
including This have I done for my true love.
In 1919 he was appointed to the staff at the
Royal College of Music where he stayed until 1924 and had a part-time
post at the University of Reading.
He had a nervous breakdown in 1924.
Always something of a rebel Holst decided to
research dancing hymns which took him to various periods of musical
history. At one time he was besotted with Elizabethan music and
then Tudor music but it is right for all musicians and music lovers
to study and treat music of different centuries and styles with
equal interest and respect. His Six Choral Songs still show a
technical insecurity but all his studies were laying the foundation
for his Hymn of Jesus. Folk music still interested him and he
tried to combine them in a Phantasy String Quartet which an abysmal
attempt. Failure and legions of mistakes are seen in his A Festival
Chime originally called Our church-bells at Thaxted. Every time
Holst tried to be adventurous or modern he came unstuck. His Three
Carols for unison voices fared better. His Four Songs for voice
and violin is an admission that he could not write for the piano
although it is said that one day Holst saw in Thaxted Church a
woman walking around singing to her own violin accompaniment.
The Hymn of Jesus was not a work of personal
faith but rather inspired by Byzantine art and less flattering
pictures of the Christ. He visited monasteries looking for inspiration
and deliberately avoided the usual and reverential images. Plainsong
is the musical impetus and it is a work that needs to heard rather
than analysed or commented upon. There is a drama and a feeling
of exaltation. While I have a different view it is probably correct
to say that it was Holst's best work so far, a much greater work
than The Planets.
His preoccupation with Sanskrit and the writings
of India with it often emphasis on death lead to his Ode to Death
from a poem by Walt Whitman but here the Grim Reaper is portrayed
as a welcome visitor.
At the end of the war Holst was in the Middle
East helping with the demobilisation of troops and organising
music entertainments. It was probably here that he conceived the
opera The Perfect Fool. It was yet another failure but the ballet
music has had some popularity.
Holst was at his wits' end. Stanford's words
came back to haunt him, "Stick to the rules, m'boy!"
And so the composer,
approaching the age of 50, turned his
back on his dislike for theoretical
correctness and studied the fugue and
other musical disciplines. He was already
interested in Bach the great exponent
of the fugue. In 1922 Holst wrote his
Fugal Overture which he did with great
annoyance. This was in 1922 and followed
the next year by the Fugal Concerto
for flute, oboe and string orchestra.
Between these two works was his accident
in Reading when he fell from a rostrum
while conducting and banged his head.
The concerto does not work. He uses
18th century models so that the work
could be short. His heart was not in
fugal writing. His next idea was to
imitate the great Beethoven and he embarked
on a Choral Symphony. But, again, its
main weakness is that he could not compose
in an extended form and some of the
music is pretty dreadful. The Prelude
is an invocation to Pan. The Song a
setting of Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn
which follows the busy Bacchanal. The
song is nothing short of awful . The
scherzo recalls Mercury the winged messenger.
The finale is too long and very weak.
His next work was condemned by all who heard
it. At the Boar's Head was a musical interlude in one act. His
exploration into Shakespeare was another attempt to attain some
distinction but, despite, some vital moments, it is another failure.
So he decided to explore another avenue. He had
not written any chamber music since 1903 and so in 1925 he wrote
his Terzetto for flute, oboe and viola, undoubtedly his best chamber
piece. It is my belief that had he written much chamber music
he would have fared better. He composed Seven Part-songs to verses
by Robert Bridges. He began work on a second choral symphony but
his main activity between 1925 and 1928 was writing music for
amateurs to be performed at various festivals. There are some
short piano pieces about which I should say nothing. The choral
ballet the Golden Goose is so badly written that it makes discerning
listeners squirm. A second choral ballet, The Morning of the Year
was written for the English Folk-Dance Society.
I am not seeking to damage Holst's reputation.
He knew that his work was sub-standard and was very depressed
and this lead to the composition of Egdon Heath, Op. 47, a gloomy
orchestral work that described solitude. It is a work of significant
interest and writing it did Holst a power of good. The concept
of beauty in loneliness is not a new idea but here Holst pours
out his soul in a remarkable orchestral essay. Curiously, it is
a fine work and Holst was pleased with it and it superseded the
Hymn of Jesus as his best work to date. Holst is reported to have
said, "It is the only good thing I have written!"
His Twelve Songs of Humbert Wolfe followed. His
next work was the Double Concerto for two violins and orchestra
which uses the device of the fugue but the music is arid. However,
it was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society.
He then set about his final opera, The Wandering Scholar based
on Helen Waddell's book. Sadly, it was another failure. He could
not write an aria or anything lyrical. There is a tedious style
of counterpoint and more fugal writing.
He became depressed again and another breakdown
followed. Some of the ideas and interests he once held dear not
longer mattered to him. His Choral Fantasia of 1933 is a setting
of Robert Bridge's Ode to Music and recaptures the despair of
his Rig Veda hymn To the unknown God. It was composed for the
Three Choirs' Festival. To add to its weakness it was written
with Schubert's influence in mind and therefore is repetitious,
long-drawn out and wearisome.
Hammersmith, a prelude and scherzo for military
band, later orchestrated, is heavy-laden and often crude and contains
yet another fugue.
In 1932 he was visiting lecturer in composition
at Harvard University but in March was taken ill returning to
England on 2 June. He now lived the life of an invalid. He continued
to compose including the Lyric Movement for viola and orchestra,
his swan song, in which for the first time he achieves a warmth
in his music. He said, "It took my being an invalid to write music
like that!"
It is a good piece.
He died in London on 25 May 1934 two months after
the premiere of the Lyric Movement. On 24 June his ashes were
interred in Chichester Cathedral.
Copyright David C F Wright 1974, renewed 1999. This article
or any part of it must not be copied or used in any way, stored
in any retrieval system, downloaded without the prior written
permission of the author. Failure to comply may result in action
at law.
see also GUSTAV
HOLST (1874-1934) by David Trippett
