Gustav Holst

Holst, a colleague of Vaughan Williams, became a quintessential part of English music, inspiring generations of composers—including Britten, Tippett, and Birtwistle—with his music’s rhythmic vitality and its fresh yet unorthodox harmonic and instrumental colors. Born in 1874 in Cheltenham, Holst suffered poor health from childhood and took up the trombone to manage his asthma. He studied music and gained invaluable first-hand orchestral experience while performing Richard Strauss under the composer’s own baton. Holst also studied the scores of innovative Russian and French composers such as Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Ravel; his first set of Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda (1908-10) anticipated Stravinsky’s experiments in rhythm and orchestration. The Planets (1914-16) is the most spectacular demonstration of Holst’s orchestral skill. Yet, dismayed by the celebrity gained through that work, he retreated to a pared down, pithy manner, culminating in the tone poem Egdon Heath (1927). Hints that he’d unearthed a rich new seam of creativity are suggested by the warmth of his 12 Welsh Folk Songs (1931), and the lovely "O Spiritual Pilgrim" (1933), counterbalanced by the sardonic playfulness both of his last opera, The Wandering Scholar (1930), and a Scherzo, the only movement he completed for a projected symphony before his death in 1934, aged 59.