Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

Born Cheltenham, September 21, 1874; died London, May 25, 1934



Think of Holst and you think of The Planets. Not much else springs to mind and, indeed, his output is comparatively slender - he was a slow starter and a slow worker - and few of his works were performed in his lifetime. He wrote much else of interest, yet The Planets is such an overwhelming, original work that everything else pales into insignificance in scale and concept.



Holst’s paternal great-grandfather settled in England from Sweden in 1807. His father was an organist, his mother a piano teacher but when he went to study at the Royal College of Music in 1893 it was the trombone that became his main instrument (he was a pupil of Stanford for composition). Vaughan Williams was a fellow student and became a lifelong friend. At first he earned his living as a trombonist with various theatres and opera companies before changing course in 1905 and becoming a teacher at St Paul’s Girls’ School and, two years later, at Morley College both in London. They were positions he held for the rest of his life.



His early work is dominated by the influence of Wagner, then tempered by his interest in religious philosophy, the mysticism, poetry and spiritualism of the East. Vaughan Williams had introduced him to English folk music. By 1915 he’d “gone through” these influences, absorbed them and arrived at a voice of his own.



During the First World War, plagued by suspicions of German sympathies because of his German-sounding name, he dropped the “von” and went out to Salonika and Constantinople to organise concerts for the British troops. The Planets, written between 1914 and 1916 had to wait until 1920 for its first complete public performance but it established his name as a leading composer. In February 1923 he suffered concussion as the result of a fall, causing a rapid deterioration in his health (never robust) which thereafter severely limited all his musical activities except composition. He became more reclusive, declining many honours and taking little interest in public affairs. His daughter Imogen, also a musician, described how “he sank into a cold region of utter despair...a grey isolation”. Holst himself, summing it all up, pinpointed “Four chief reasons for gratitude...Music, the Cotswolds, RVW [Vaughan Williams] and having known the impersonality of orchestral playing”.

Essential works

St Paul’s Suite (1913)

Written for St Paul’s Girl’s School Orchestra, a delightful suite in the character of English folksongs, although few are actually quoted; the last movement uses “Greensleeves” as a counterpoint.

Bournemouth Sinfonietta Naxos 8 550823

The Planets (1916)

This seven-movement orchestral suite depicting the characters of each planet was the work in which all of Holst’s previous influences gelled with dramatic, emotional, lyrical and ethereal orchestral effects, not least in the hidden choir of women’s voices at the end of Neptune. Jupiter, its best-known section, is also the hymn tune Thaxted (an Essex town where Holst played the organ), to which the words “I vow to thee my country” are sung.

Suggesting a single recording is difficult – there are so many very good ones. Here are some of them:

Montreal Symphony Chorus and Orchestra / Charles Dutoit Decca Gramophone Awards Collection 476 1724

Berlin Philharmonic / Sir Simon Rattle EMI 359382-2

BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sir Adrian Boult Beulah CD 2PD12

The Hymn of Jesus (1917)

A distinct, un-solemn, choral-orchestral cantata highlighting Holst’s great skill as a choral writer.

London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra / Richard Hickox Chandos CHAN241-6

A Somerset Rhapsody (1906-07)

An orchestral work based on two English folksongs.

A Fugal Overture, Op 40, No 1 (1922)

Originally the overture to Holst's opera The Perfect Fool

(Both the above)

London Philharmonic Orchestra; LSO / Boult Lyrita SRCD222



Egdon Heath (1927)

A tone-poem inspired by Thomas Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native, this is another side of Holst, dark and brooding. The Parisians hissed it; Holst thought it his best work.

Royal Scottish National Orchestra / David Lloyd-Jones Naxos 8 553696

Also in the Archive

Down to Earth - explore Holst's rich repertoire beyond The Planets.