Gustav Holst Biography

Gustav Holst

(Gustave Theodore von Holst; Cheltenham, 1874-London, 1934) English composer of Swedish origin.A disciple of Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music in London, he became, like his teacher, a passionate folklorist.After having been an orchestral musician for some time, from 1903 he devoted himself to teaching, an activity that he exercised first at Dulwich, later at Morley College, and, finally, as a composition teacher, at the Royal College of Music..

He is the author of one of the most performed and recorded pages in the repertoire: The Planets , which in a certain sense has obscured, if not totally eclipsed, the rest of his production.He showed throughout his life a growing interest in Hindu philosophy and culture, which inspired some of his most important compositions, such as the chamber opera Savitri , which would come to exert a profound influence on the most important composers.young people, with Benjamin Britten at the helm.His daughter Imogen Holst (Richmond, 1907-Aldeburgh, 1984) was a well-known musicologist.

Gustav Holst

The planets , a piece that has immortalized the name of Gustav Holst, opens with the violent and apocalyptic chords of Mars, the bearer of war , a movement in the form of a march that, at the time of its premiere (1918 ), was considered an allusion to the First World War.Six more, dedicated to as many planets ( Venus , Mercury , Jupiter , Saturn , Uranus and Neptune ) complete this suite in which its author expressed his astrological passion.Composed between 1914 and 1918, Los planetas is a work developed in the form of a symphonic poem, with precise literary references: the esoteric ritual meaning of each planet is interpreted, often different from the mythological image.Mars appears as bearer of war and Mercury as winged messenger ; But Venus is the bearer of peace , and Jupiter above all is the bearer of joy , in an almost Dionysian sense; Neptune is the mystic who accompanies Saturn, bearer of old age , and Uranus the magician .

It has been wanted to recognize in The Planets the eastern period of the copious production of Gustav Holst, interested in the mystical occultism of Indian philosophical thought.It is in any case a central period, singularly isolated between the juvenile, turned towards the discoveries of English folklore, and the eclectic one of full maturity, which would later lead to devotion to Bach, according to the affirmation of a taste neoclassic.

The work is, at heart, a product of the late German romanticism; the "inspired" nature of the musician, eloquent, in many points Straussian, and his taste for timbre as an immediate expressive term of visual evidence, both stimulated by a theme rich in situations, are the characteristics of this score.It is descriptive music, that is, one that "looks" through sounds.Holst's taste arises from a successful set of images and asserts itself, in a continuous encounter of common motifs, gimmicky and musically centered.

As a result of the fascination that the East exercised in Holst during this same period of its production is also the chamber opera in one act Savitri , composed in 1908 and premiered in 1916 in Covent Garden in London.The protagonist, Savitri, is the young daughter of a king who chooses as her husband a prince to whom the gods have assigned only one year of life.The girl knows this and intends to accompany him in death, from which, however, she manages to rescue him by virtue of prayer.

Holst reduced the copious matter of an ancient Hindu legend to the thematic nucleus of love that conquers death, underlining the mystical-emotional character of the legend, and applied his simplification criteria to the entire wording of the score: from the proportions of the orchestra's "instrumental ensemble" (the work is, in effect, presented as a "poem for three voices and an invisible choir accompanied by a double string quartet, seven flutes and English horn") to the simplicity of musical performance, which gave the work a real poetic efficacy.In addition to the opaline color of the carefully modulated sound, the call of death that runs through the entire work in an anguished rhythm of three repeated notes, and the ethereal invisible chorus, spectrally framed, in some paintings.