A Biography of Gustav Holst
Part 2: 1903-1914
by David Trippett
The Teacher
Holst was an informal teacher for the time, dispensing with
the antiquated practice of having a female teacher present
in his classroom to oversee the
pupils' behaviour. His duties were to teach singing and arrange for and direct
the school orchestra, both of which greatly suited his enthusiastic and proactive
personality. Though music was regarded as something of a peripheral subject
by the Head Mistress, Holst had a way with the children as Dorothy Callard
remembered: 'I first came to his notice when he turned me out of class for
misbehaving. I had a stormy interview with the Head Mistress who said that
in future I should do maths during the music period. He [Holst] sent for
me afterwards, and said that he was sorry that she had interfered with a
purely private row and would I do something for him. He had been told that
I had a marvellous memory, so would I come to him after school every Friday
afternoon and make him turn out his pockets to see what letters he ought
to have posted, and write a card to remind him of what he ought to be doing.
I did this for the rest of my school life, and he often gave me music to
copy or transpose.'
His teaching work allowed him to devote time
to composition resulting in a work entitled The Mystic Trumpeter for
soprano and orchestra, a setting of Walt Whitman's poem 'From
noon to Starry Night' from 'Leaves of Grass'. The final words
of this poem are 'Joy! Joy! all over joy!' which Holst sets
against a pppp orchestra rather than a more obvious ff showing
his originality and willingness to attempt and achieve greater
expression through a transcendence of tradition. Though still
steeped in chromaticism, there are glimpses of Holst's later
use of polytonality in the horn and trumpet calls with which
the work opens.
The premiere of the Suite de Ballet,
and the songs Calm is the Morn, My True Love Hath
My Heart, Weep You No More, Sad Fountains, and Kindly
Loving took place in 1904, along with the publication of
several short pieces, including Maya, and Valse Etude for
violin and piano and a part-song setting of Robert Bridges
words for mixed voices Thou Didst Delight My Eyes.
VW frequently helped his friend by paying for
concerts of Holst's music and enlisted him in 1905 as a contributor
(composer and co-editor) to the new hymnbook - 'The English
Hymnal'. Holst's imagination was fired when a competition organised
by the Italian music publisher Ricordi for an opera by an English
composer with a prize of £500 and a 40% share of the performing
fees was announced (11). Sita was
entered after friends had rallied round him (VW putting up £20
to pay for a scribe to write out the full score) to ensure
the copying of parts was completed by the deadline of 31 December
1906.
In autumn 1905 Holst took on an additional
teaching post which he was to cherish, making perhaps his most
important contribution to music education in England. He was
to hold it for the rest of his life. St Paul's Girls' school
was founded in 1903 as a counterpart of St. Paul's School (for
boys) founded in 1509. With 157 girls, Holst was to take over
the responsibility for teaching singing in the school, allowing
Adine O'Neill (the other music teacher) to teach other areas.
Fortunately, the Head Mistress believed strongly in the therapeutic
practice of singing and the common requests by parents for
their children to be exempt from such mundane classes were
almost always denied. Wary of imposing his views on students
he said 'I have three feelings about works of art, interest,
romance, and love. I'd never say that the works I love most
are necessarily the best.'
He used the line 'My Jane hath a lame, tame,
crane' and such like to teach clear diction, often composing
works for his choirs so that they were not stuck with the popular
tunes of the day which Holst felt were not good for their education
(12). He encouraged the singing
of rounds and an attitude of constant self-improvement, his
infectious enthusiasm soon ensured that he was extremely popular
and that the music-making in St. Paul's was taken seriously
by students, teachers, and parents - a phenomenon sadly lacking
today in many schools. Holst wrote that it was 'one of the
great moments of my career when I came in early one morning
on a dark winter's day, to fetch my letters before school hours.
I found several of the girls had come earlier still, without
saying a word to me, and were sitting round the class room
fire singing Palestrina for sheer love of the music.'
Around this time, folksong was beginning to
exert an influence over Holst's composition. VW, Cecil Sharp,
and Percy Grainger were touring the country trying to save
the traditional music of England from extinction. Speaking
of outside influences, he explained 'I believe very strongly
that we are largely the result of our surroundings and that
we never do anything alone. Everything that is worth doing
is the result of several minds playing on each other.' which
approaches the essence of folk music itself. A Somerset
Rhapsody contains tunes from rural England and was one
of his first big successes being widely performed throughout
the country. The simple and often modal melodies found in folk
tunes served as an antidote to his predilection for Wagnerian
chromaticism and this trait begins to disappear at this point.
In spring 1907 Holst took on more teaching,
this time at Morley College for Working Men and Women. Again,
this was an appointment occasioned by VW. It may have been
Isobel's pregnancy that prompted Holst to seek further work
to remain as financially secure as possible. On 12 April that
year, a baby daughter, baptised Imogen, was born. Her cries
as a baby reduced Holst to a nervous state, 'Imogen is practising
coloratura - the sort that foghorns usually perform - and my
brain feels pulpy whenever she lets fly.'
His strong disapproval of the criticism of
amateurs stirred some people at his various institutions though
he was eventually accepted and began to expound the virtues
of amateur music in some of his later lectures. With growing
success as a composer (writing during his spare time), he found
the workload inevitably too great and sought refuge from his
hectic schedule in a holiday in Algeria - paid for by VW who
sympathised with his plight. Although he attempted no composition
during this holiday, he did note down tunes that he heard as
he wandered through the sights sounds, and smells of the
Arab quarter to which he was particularly
attracted.
Teacher and composer
After Algeria (1908), Holst began what was
to be his first characteristically mature work, the chamber
opera Savitri. The libretto (written by Holst) comes
from Sanskrit literature, specifically the Mahabharata, which
is reckoned to be eight times the length of the Odyssey and
the Iliad, combined. The incident selected from this gargantuan
text is the story of Savitri, wife of Satyavan, who is visited
by Death, who tells her that he has come to take away her husband.
Instead of reviling Death, she praises him, and then passionately
implored him to grant her one wish for herself - her own life
in all its fullness. She then claims that Satyavan's life is
essential to the fulfilment of her own, and thus outwits Death,
who is forced to retire defeated. The subtlety of the music
(13) contrasts with the some of
the more bombastic works of the late nineteenth century and
anticipates the smaller works with were to come into fashion
during the war.
Other works of this period include a set of Choral
Hymns from the Rig Veda. These were to occupy him for
the next couple of years as he sought to explore this more
versatile medium of expression. In both this and Savitri pseudo-oriental
effects are avoided so that they do not degenerate into a
pastiche with The Musical Times writing that the Hymns were
'Sound, firm impressions of the East from a sane Western
perspective.' It was here that Holst was able to develop
his interest in asymmetrical metres (five or seven beats
in the bar), which he considered, more suited to settings
of the English language. He had to publish these works himself
as no publisher was prepared to take them on.
Many works were being published commercially
though, for example the songs Awake, My Heart and She
Who is Dear to Me, the Four Old English Carols,
and an arrangement of Seven Scottish Airs for strings
and piano - most of which won favourable reviews. As well as
continuing, with much enthusiasm, in his teaching at Morley
and St. Paul's, in 1909 he began work on a masque for the four-hundredth
anniversary of the foundation of St. Paul's - The Vision
of 'Dame Christian'. He also produced a piece for military
band (Suite no. 1) which was well received by bandsmen who
spoke of their excitement at being confronted by such an interesting
and challenging work.
Holst, in addition to his normal lessons in
1909, put on a production of Purcell's King Arthur in
Morley College. This was only the second performance of the
work since the seventeenth century. Later still, he set out
on a production of The Fairy Queen which had had no
performance at all since 1697. His health, however, was constantly
under strain and, after a cycling trip in the sun to see Norman
O'Neill about a possible collaboration, he collapsed from heat
exhaustion.
1910-12 saw a host of conducting engagements
and further composition for Holst was becoming a very well
known
member of the London musical establishment.
Advancing to the Queen's Hall
The period of work in 1911 had such an adverse
affect on Holst's health that he was forced to take a short
holiday. He set off with the young composer Cecil Coles on
a walking holiday in Switzerland for which he paid using money
earned for the scoring of Morris Dance tunes for Cecil
Sharp. On returning he reduced his teaching burden at Morley
College concentrating only on the more advanced pupils to facilitate
more composition.
Holst began work on a setting of Hecuba's
Lament from Euripides' 'The Trojan Women' using the Gilbert
Murray translation, scoring the work for contralto solo,
three-part female chorus, and orchestra - with a characteristically
pragmatic attitude, he scored the piece so that it could
work with reduced orchestration (14).
In 1912 Holst took on another teaching position
- at Wycombe Abbey School at High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire,
which had links with St. Paul's Girls' School. He composed
a 'School Song' for St. Paul's after a competition for a poem
that he might set to music. In the end an amalgamation of several
students' attempts resulted and the Playground Song was
set to the words:
With joyful hearts our song we raise
For many a jocund scene
In swimming-bath, gymnasium,
And playground cool and green
Come victory or failure
St. Paul's will play the game!
This was never published and the manuscript
remains in the school itself.
Besides composition there was an increasingly
busy round of concerts. Holst conducted
A Somerset Rhapsody in
Bournemouth and Frank Duckworth directed the first performance
of
Two Eastern Pictures. In London the first group of
the
Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda were performed at
the Queen's Hall and later, on 1 May, Holst conducted the first
performance of
Beni Mora. This final piece received
mixed reviews with the Musical Times praising the finale: 'Its
clever mingling of dance music, such as might issue from the
cafés, with the music of an Arab procession from the
desert through the town and out into the desert again, was
an interesting feat of the imagination and technique.' But
other critics were less kind 'We do not ask for Biskra dancing
girls in Langham Place.' Friends, however, remarked that, although
the work is difficult to comprehend and enjoy on first hearing,
it improves with further listening revealing 'great power and
much striking beauty.'
During the summer of 1912, Holst heard Diaghilev's
extraordinary Ballets Russe performing Stravinsky's
The
Firebird and it is even possible that Holst met the great
Russian composer after the performance. The influence of Stravinsky
was soon to be discernible in Holst's subsequent works. A further
musical shock came in the form of Schoenberg's
Five Pieces
for Orchestra which Holst heard on 3 September and described
as 'like Wagner, but without the tunes.'
Able to switch from the heights of Schoenberg
to evening classes with ease, Holst attempted, unsuccessfully,
to obtain further financial backing for his musical projects
and tuition at Morley College. He did, however, shame the committee
into funding the tuition of one particular student when he
offered to teach him without fee. Concerts in Newcastle-upon-Tyne
of Holst's works were becoming more frequent thanks to the
efforts of W. G. Whittaker, a close friend who worked as a
conductor and choir director (
15).
Holst was chiefly occupied with revision rather
than composition during the second half of 1912 during which
he worked on
The Cloud Messenger,
The Mystic Trumpeter,
and the
Suite de Ballet. In his direction of musical
groups of mixed ability, Holst saw himself in the same tradition
as Purcell, who himself wrote music for a girls school, as
Bach who composed music according to the requirements of his
employers, and as Haydn, who moulded his music to accommodate
the varying technical abilities of his players.
The busy life of a teacher, composer and conductor
was again taking its toll. Holst accepted an invitation to
go on an expenses paid travelling trip with Balfour Gardiner,
Clifford, and Arnold Bax. Holst felt that the only way to get
to know a new city was to get lost in it, and, on arrival in
Gerona, Holst duly set off alone and was not to be found at
dinnertime. He eventually turned up by some folk dancers and
the four musicians proceeded to hold philosophical conversations
considering 'fogginess' in the arts and the difference between
memory of an event and the event itself. An important aspect
of the holiday was the development of Holst's interest in astrology
as Clifford Bax was something of an expert.
On his return, a new wing had been built in
St. Paul's School and Holst had a soundproofed room which he
subsequently said helped him greatly to compose (in peace and
quiet!) the first composition completed in this new environment
was the
St. Paul's Suite on which he had been working
for about a year and which he dedicated to the school in honour
of the
new wing.
Concerts and influences
1913 was an important year for Holst: Many
concerts of his works took place under the baton of Balfour
Gardiner, Edmund Fellowes brought out his pioneering edition
of madrigals by Thomas Morley (
16),
and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes returned to London for two seasons
now performing such works as
Petrushka and
The Rite
of Spring. While the English audience did not emulate the
Parisians (
17), the reviews portray
prevalent disapproval: 'Its savagery…is horrific...the
most outlandish cries and groans…To hear this Festival
of Spring is the most curious of experiences; but one cannot
believe one would ever get it to yield a moment's actual pleasure.'(
18)
Labelled as having 'no relation to music as most of us understand
the word', Holst was doubtless affected by the conception of
large orchestral writing and these concerts must have had a
major influence on his decision to compose large-scale orchestral
works.
After the autumn term at Morley and further
concerts of
Beni Mora and
The Cloud Messenger,
Holst decided to go on a five-day walking holiday in Essex.
He arrived in Thaxted despite the wintry weather and, after
viewing a number of the medieval buildings, decided that he
liked the place so much he would like to live there. Two months
later he and Isobel looked at a cottage two miles south of
the town and decided to rent it straight away. It was in these
peaceful surroundings that Holst was to start work on
The
Planets.
After hearing Schoenberg's
Five Pieces for
Orchestra in 1914, although this probably provided one
of the impulses that sparked off the creation of
The Planets,
Holst, in a demonstration of his sense of humour, lampooned
the modernist school at Morley. He wrote a futuristic 'Tone
poem in H' for two violins and orchestra with a 'Contrabass
macaroon', a 'Babyphone (appealing especially to mothers)',
a 'Tubular Pneumatic Buzzaphone', together with a pair of
'Te(a)tra(y) Chords especially imported from Lyons in the
south of France.' A special feature of this work would be
the seventeenth inversion of the Metropolitan and District
sixth, and Holst would be obliged to conduct with two batons,
one for the strings and one for the wind, as one section
would be playing in seven and the other in nine beats to
the bar. Later on the time would be 9.666 and X-Y for the
two sections respectively!
