Holst, Gustav(us Theodore von) (1874–1934)

English composer of distant Swedish descent. He wrote operas, including Sávitri (1908) and At the Boar's Head (1924); ballets; choral works, including Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda (1908–12) and The Hymn of Jesus (1917); orchestral suites, including The Planets (1914–16); and songs. He was a lifelong friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams, with whom he shared an enthusiasm for English folk music. His musical style, although tonal and drawing on folk song, tends to be severe. He was the father of Imogen Holst (1907–1984), musicologist and his biographer.

Holst's father was a music teacher and his mother a pianist, and he had early experience as an organist and choral and orchestral conductor in a small way. In 1892 he went to the Royal College of Music in London, but disliked the keyboard instruments and studied composition under Charles Stanford. Suffering from neuritis, he took up the trombone instead of the piano, and on leaving played in the orchestra of the Carl Rosa Opera Company, and later in the Scottish Orchestra. In 1903 he became music master at a school in south London, and in 1905 at St Paul's Girls' School, where he remained to his death. In 1907 he was appointed music director at Morley College for Working Men and Women; in 1912 he conducted there the first modern performance of Henry Purcell's Fairy Queen. From 1919 he taught composition at the Royal College of Music and in 1919–23 at Reading College. He had to wait a long time for recognition. It was not until the public premiere of The Planets in 1919 that Holst achieved the first real success of his career. In 1923 he conducted at the University of Michigan, USA, and his opera The Perfect Fool (a satire on Wagnerism) was given at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London. The choral symphony after John Keats was given at the 1925 Leeds Festival and in 1928 his bleak tone poem after Thomas Hardy, Egdon Heath, was premiered by the New York Symphony Orchestra. The Choral Fantasia was first heard in 1931 and the Brook Green Suite in 1933.

Side by side with the influence of English folk music was that of Indian literature (Sávitri is the story from the Mahābhārata), and a number of choral hymns and songs are set to texts from the Rig-Veda, translated by Holst from the Sanskrit. He was also influenced by the early music of Thomas Weelkes and William Byrd.

Works Opera Sávitri (1908; produced 1916), At the Boar's Head (on Shakespeare's Henry IV, 1924), The Wandering Scholar (1929–30).

Choral Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda with orchestra (1908–12), The Hymn of Jesus for chorus and orchestra (1917), choral symphony (John Keats) for soprano, chorus, and orchestra (1925).

Orchestral A Somerset Rhapsody (1907), Beni Mora suite (1910), The Planets (1914–16), Egdon Heath for orchestra (after Thomas Hardy, 1927); St Paul's suite for strings; Fugal Concerto for flute, oboe, and strings (1923), concerto for two violins and orchestra (1929).

Other A Moorside Suite for brass band; nine hymns from the Rig-Veda for voice and piano (1908).