Later years
For his holiday Holst travelled south
by train via Chambéry to Genoa,
arriving in Rome on Christmas Eve. He
went round the city in his customary
manner exploring by 'getting lost',
and left for Naples after declaring
'Rome's no good after Greece.'(23)
In Naples he visited the ruins of Pompeii
and saw Vesuvius covered in snow, shimmering
in the winter sunshine. He travelled
to such places as Taormina, Lucca, Pisa,
Ferrara, Verona, Perugia, and Ravenna
before returning to England. No sooner
had he arrived, than Holst set off for
America where he was to attend the ceremony
and dinner of the American Academy.
He spent most of his time in New York
with his brother though travelled to
Boston to lecture at Harvard University.
On his 'second return'
Holst was glad to be able to get into
a routine again after all his travelling.
Characteristically though, he set about
composing once again, this time writing
twelve songs to the words of Humbert
Wolfe's poetry including The Dream
City and Betelgeuse in which,
like Neptune, he sought to express
the incomprehensibility of space. Concerts
of his music were still taking place
around the country, for example a performance
of The Golden Goose in Warwick
and The Planets at the Canterbury
Festival. In terms of composition though,
Holst had finally begun his Double Concerto
after Bach which was to be in three
movements that ran continuously. He
wrote to Imogen that 'Just now I am
feeling that life is moderately pleasing'
and soon after had another 'field day'
with VW where they both looked at the
latter's 'masque for dancing' Job.
Much later VW commented 'I should like
to place on record all that he [Holst]
did for me when I wrote Job.
I should be alarmed to say how many
'Field Days' we spent over it.' VW was
awarded the gold medal of the Royal
Philharmonic Society in March 1930 and
the next month it was Holst's turn.
During the interval of the premiere
of his Double Concerto at the Queen's
Hall, Holst was presented with the Gold
Medal by Frederick Austin who described
he and VW as 'contemporaries, life-long
friends, Arcadians both.'
A further walking tour,
this time to Holland, was intended to
reinvigorate Holst after a busy term.
He explored The Hague, Leiden, Haarlem,
and Amsterdam where he also heard a
performance of the St. Matthew Passion.
Later that year he performed A Choral
Fantasia and a setting of Robert
Bridge's Ode for the Bicentenary Commemoration
of Henry
Purcell at the Chichester Festival.
The Final Years
In summer 1930 Holst
began work on the much-postponed work
commissioned by the BBC for military
band. It was called Hammersmith and
Holst said of it 'As far as the work
owes anything to outside influences
it is the result of living in Hammersmith
for thirty-nine years on and off…'
Split into a Prelude and Scherzo, the
shifting bitonal lines of the Prelude
evoke the incessant, dark flow of the
river. The slow moving ground bass with
flowing counterpoint above also conjures
up images of the river while the odd
triplet figure sounds like a whistling
cockney. This work was completed by
the end of October and by the end of
the year Holst had completed A Choral
Fantasia, Hammersmith, and
The Wandering Scholar. Early
in the New Year Boult conducted a radio
broadcast of Savitri, The
Planets, and Beni Mora. Holst
re-scored Hammersmith for full
orchestra and revised the original version
a little before sending it off to B.
Walton O'Donnell at the BBC. A new kind
of commission was received when Holst
was asked to write the soundtrack for
a film called The Bells. Although
this type of commission was not considered
normal for a 'serious' composer, Holst
was attracted by the idea and made some
notes for the score (it had to be completed
in a month) before embarking on 'a week's
middle-aged walking' in Normandy. On
his return he finished the score and
recorded it in Wembley despite his persistent
neuritis. He soon lost his earlier enthusiasm
when the directors requested certain
changes and, on hearing a private run-though
(using dreadful speakers) was utterly
disillusioned with the result. Imogen,
who was present, recalled his 'white-faced
look of dismay'. The film was eventually
sold off to an American company though
it was released neither there nor in
England.
Holst's passion for
walking tours did not abate and he spent
time in the Cotswolds before conducting
his Whitsuntide singers in Chichester,
and later travelled to Dorset visiting
Blandford Forum, Dorchester, Abbotsbury,
and Chesil Beach. Later that year he
conducted The Planets in one
of the BBC Prom concerts which was broadcast
on national wavelengths. Towards the
end of the year Holst received an invitation
from Harvard University to accept the
post of Horatio Lamb Lecturer in Composition
for the second half of the academic
session. In addition there was an invitation
from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to
conduct a concert of his own works in
January. He accepted both offers and
took on an agent - Duncan McKenzie -
to relieve the pressure of his being
a celebrity over there.
In the New Year, Holst
boarded the S.S. Bremen at Southampton
and set off for America. After some
initial sightseeing in Boston, he conducted
the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 19
January in a concert of all his own
works including St. Paul's Suite,
A Somerset Rhapsody, The Perfect
Fool ballet music, the orchestral
version of Bach's Fugue à
la Gigue, and Hammersmith.
After travelling to
New York, Holst spent time exploring
the city, the theatre, gave a talk at
a meeting of the Beethoven Association,
and gave a lecture on 'England and her
Music' to the National Association of
Organists. In Boston the teaching commitments
of his new post were favourable, so
much so that Holst could devote several
mornings a week to composition - it
was here that he taught composition
to Elliott Carter, now an eminent contemporary
composer.
He greatly enjoyed teaching
and composing in Harvard, and wrote
to Whittaker saying that 'They have
given me delightful rooms and I find
that I can get a fair amount of writing
done'.
After Harvard Holst
planned to visit Canada for a lecture
and concert tour. There he lectured
in Montreal on 'England and her Music'
and conducted, among other works, Jupiter.
At the end of March
Holst gave a lecture to the Library
of Congress commemorating the bicentenary
of Haydn's birth and, in April, he gave
the first performance of Hammersmith
as it was originally scored - for military
band (24). He attended
a concert containing Liszt's Dante
Symphony after which he had to walk
home 'to get over it.' On returning
to Boston, he became ill and saw a doctor
who told him to go to hospital where
haemorrhagic gastritis caused by a duodenal
ulcer was diagnosed. All forthcoming
engagements were cancelled and he remained
in hospital for fifteen days. After
having recovered he moved back into
Elliot House and returned to his teaching
duties with renewed vigour as well as
continuing to work on the Six Choruses.
Further concerts and lectures continued
as his health improved and, having first
cancelled his part in Ann Arbor (music
festival) he changed his mind and went
ahead with it.
An uneventful voyage
brought him back to England on 2 June
1932 and he settled into his English
life once again, teaching, composing,
travelling, and walking. He accepted
several conducting commitments and took
up the trombone again for a performance
of VW's Fantasia on Christmas Carols
to be performed at St. Paul's that
Christmas. On 29 October he was the
guest of honour at the Annual General
Meeting of the Music Teachers' Association
and, after term ended at St. Paul's,
set out on two one-day walks - the first
through Southwark, Rotherhithe, Greenwich,
and Poplar to Barking; the second from
Barking to Theydon Bois, returning by
train. In the New Year, however, his
stamina failed him and he suffered a
relapse from which it took him several
months to recover. Similarly in March,
after talking with Lionel Tertis of
plans for a performance of the Lyric
Movement in St. Paul's, Holst had
to take to his bed and engagements for
the next month were cancelled.
Permission was sought
by an American film company to use extracts
from The Planets on a soundtrack
and Holst was asked to compose some
additional music specifically for the
film. Despite his experience of The
Bells Holst agreed though nothing
came of the project and any music that
was written must have been lost or destroyed.
When Archibald Davidson
and his wife (friends from America)
came to London in October, Holst was
eager to show them the same hospitality
that he had received while over there.
He was taken ill, however, shortly after
they arrived and had to spend most of
the week in bed. By December 1933 his
health had not improved and he was admitted
to New Lodge Clinic, Windsor Forest,
three days before Christmas. He was
still in hospital in late January when
the premiere of The Wandering Scholar
was given in Liverpool. By February
his condition had not improved and he
wrote to Adrian Boult 'If my ulcer has
not healed by the 22nd the doctors suggest
my leaving the nursing home and either
having an operation or leading a "restricted
life"'. Later that month Elgar died
and Holst received news that his close
friend Norman O'Neill had been killed
in a motor accident - Holst began to
consider his own future very seriously.
He managed to hear one
of his new compositions, Brook Green
Suite, played through at St. Paul's
and named after the green on which the
school stands. After this spell of activity,
Holst suffered a relapse though recovered
quickly and was contented by listening
to the frequent broadcasts of his works
on the BBC. He eventually decided to
undertake a major operation rather than
lead a restricted life and on 23 May
he underwent such an operation for the
removal of the duodenal ulcer. The surgery
went well though the hospital announced
that Holst would not be out of danger
for three days. Such was the shock of
the operation to Holst's delicate health,
he died of heart failure two days later
and 'passed away quietly and peacefully
like a little child.'
Family and friends were
shocked as they had not thought that
the operation could have had such consequences.
A group of singers who were to give
a concert in Little Saxton church, Greensted,
the following day had promised Holst
(who supervised some of their rehearsals)
that whatever happened they would go
ahead with the concert. Despite a highly
emotional beginning when almost all
the choir were in tears, the concerts
went well and Dorothy Callard recalled
that 'we agreed that it was Mr Holst
who was conducting us…'
His ashes were buried
in Chichester Cathedral and Isobel wrote
to Bishop Bell saying 'I am really glad
now that he has passed on, because if
he had lived he would have been an invalid
and he would have been most unhappy.
I was with him to the end and his going
out was so peaceful and beautiful and
he suffered no pain.'
David Trippett
© Len Mullenger 2001
Bibliography
Holst's Music
: A Guide by A.E.F. Dickinson, Alan
Gibbs(Editor)
Holst : The Planets
by Richard Greene (Cambridge Music Handbooks
1995)
A Comprehensive Biography
of Composer Gustav Holst, With Correspondence
and Diary Excerpts : Including His American
Years by Jon C. Mitchell Not
yet available
Gustav Holst
by Rubbra, E. Triad press, London,
1974
Gustav Holst : The
Man and His Music by Michael Short
OUP 1990 Out of Print
Gustav Holst: letters
to Whittaker by Short, M. (ed.)
(Glasgow University, 1974)
Heirs and Rebels
by Vaughan-Williams, U. + Holst, I.
(eds.) The Cooper Square Publishers,
NY, 1974)
Gustav Holst : A
Biography by Imogen, Holst Out
of Print OUP 1938
The Music of Gustav
Holst Imogen Holst Out of Print
OUP 1951
Selected Discography
The Planets, The
Perfect Fool, Egdon Heath
NPO/LSO Boult/Previn EMI British Composers
CDM 5669342 Crotchet
The Planets with
Grainger The Warriors
Philharmonia John Eliot Gardiner DG
4458602 Crotchet
Somerset Rhapsody.
Invocation - cello & orchestra.
Beni Mora - Oriental Suite. Fugal Overture.
Egdon Heath. Hammersmith.
SNO David Lloyd-Jones Naxos 8.553696
Crotchet
The Hymn of Jesus,
Choral Symphony
LPO and Choir Felicity palmer Groves/Boult
EMI British Composers CDM 5651282
Crotchet
The Cloud Messenger.
The Hymn of Jesus. Ave Maria. The Evening
Watch. Seven Part Songs. A Choral Fantasia.
A Dirge for Two Veterans. Ode to Death.
This have I done for my true love. Four
Part Songs.
LSO London Sinfonia Hickox Chandos
Twofer CHAN2416 Crotchet
At The Boar's
Head, The Wandering Scholar
Langridge, Tomlinson, Ross, Palmer,
RLPO/Groves
Rippon, Burrowes, Langdon, Tear ECO/Bedford
EMI British Composers CDM5651272
Crotchet
The Morning of
the Year, The Golden Goose, King Estemere
Guildford Choral Society, Philharmonia,
Hilary Davan Wetton Hyperion CDA
66784 Crotchet
Footnotes
(1)
On the departure of Imogen Holst
for the Royal College of Music, the
composer asked his daughter: "Now whatever
you do, promise me one thing - that
you will never read a textbook on harmony!"
(2)
Short, M. Gustav Holst, the man
and his music (Oxford University Press,
1990) p.2
(3)
Now called Clarence Road
(4
) Gustavus Valentin(e) was the first
member of the recently emigrated family
to marry an Englishwoman.
(5)
Gustav's father felt that the trombone
would be a good antidote to his son's
asthma.
(6)
See note two p. 11
(7)
During this period the asthma attacks
had largely abated.
(8)
Holst spoke of having the 'shock
of my life' on hearing the opening bars
of Tristan.
(9)
Parry, as head of the RCM, wrote:
'My dear Von Holst, You are not at all
likely to "give offence" to any authorities
at the RCM, they have much to good a
opinion of you. I am very sorry we shall
not have the pleasure of your presence
at the RCM next term, but you are quite
right to take an opportunity of the
kind you tell me of.'
(10)
Holst later spoke of the benefits
of learning the 'impersonality' of orchestral
playing.
(11)
Charles Stanford was to be on the
Jury.
(12)
He also introduced them to Bach
Cantatas.
(13)
The scoring is for double string
quartet, a double bass, two flutes,
and cor anglais, with a wordless chorus.
(14)
In spite of this, Holst had to
wait several years before the first
performance.
(15)
A performance took place that year
of the first part of Choral Hymns from
the Rig Veda.
(16)
At this Holst remarked 'I think
that I can say that since this event
I have never been quite the same man.'
(17)
There was a riot on the premiere
performance!
(18)
Richard Campbell
(19)
This work was dedicated to VW.
(20)
This took place during the interval
of a football match.
(21)
This is based on the first chapter
of 'The Return of the Native.'
(22)
At that time the BBC had its own
band.
(23)
During his YMCA days Holst had had
the opportunity of exploring Athens.
(24)
The BBC premiere had not yet taken
place.
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