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Home , Brook Green, Egdon Heath (Holst), Gustav Holst, The Planets

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) Library of Congress in Washington. He also took the opportunity to visit his younger brother Emil, established in America as an actor under the name of Ernest Cossart. By June the following year, 1932, he was in The English composer was the son of a musician and again, able to entertain his brother, with whom he visited descended from a family of mixed Scandinavian, German and Russian scenes from their childhood. His time in America had brought a origin that had settled in England in the early nineteenth century. His temporary break in hospital, and when he returned to England his childhood was spent in , where his father supervised his health was uncertain, leading to further periods in hospital. He study of the piano. A later period at the in succeeded, however, in completing the Brook Green Suite and the Lyric brought a lasting friendship with , an Movement for and . He died on 25 May 1934, after a association that was to the advantage of both in their free criticism and major operation, and is buried in Chichester Cathedral, where his music discussion of one another's compositions. had often been heard, near the grave of his favorite Tudor composer, . It was in part a weakness in health, as well as financial necessity, which prompted Holst for a time to earn his living as a trombonist, touring Holst wrote his Brook Green Suite during the last year of his life during a with the and playing with the Scottish period in hospital. It was dedicated to the St Paul's Girls' School Junior Orchestra. Eventually he decided to devote himself, as far as possible, to Orchestra and scored primarily for strings, with optional additional parts composition. Teaching positions, and particularly his long association for flute, and . As so often with Holst there is a prevailing with St Paul's Girls' School in , and his work as director of suggestion of English folk-song in each of the three movements, the first music for the enthusiastic amateurs at , allowed him of which, Prelude, presents its principal theme over a pattern of some time, at least in the summer holidays, but the relatively even descending scales, at first for and , and then also for tenor of his life, which suited his diffident character, was considerably viola. The first melody of the Air is accompanied initially by the disturbed by the great popular success of , which had its first plucked notes of the other instruments, before the viola takes up the complete public performance in 1920. His later music never achieved theme. A secondary melody, marked Poco animato, is introduced, such a lasting triumph with the public, although his Shakespearian before the principal theme is heard again from the cello, followed by opera At the Boar's Head aroused respectful interest at the time, while the first . The viola takes up the Poco animato theme before the other works generally had a mixed critical reception, including his 1927 brief closing section. The third movement, Dance, is said to be based on , published as a tribute to . His St Paul's a melody heard in Sicily, but is presented in very characteristically Suite, written for the well-known girls' school in Hammersmith, retains a English form. firm place in repertoire, as does the later Brook Green Suite, and the 1917 Hymn of Jesus for choruses and orchestra has an naxos.com honorable position in English choral music.

Holst's later years brought engagements that overtaxed his strength, not least a stimulating and busy period in the United States, where his Brook Green Suite https://youtu.be/_S0tFb29kFI music was welcomed and where he conducted the Boston Symphony Lyric Movement for viola and orchestra https://youtu.be/Eu2iDvyjt2c The Planets AUDIO https://youtu.be/Isic2Z2e2xs Orchestra in a series of three concerts of his own works and taught and The Planets CONCERT https://youtu.be/3OD_HzdZwKk composed during a short period at Harvard, lecturing on Haydn at the