40 Fun Facts About Gustav Holst

Which instrument did Gustav Holst take up at twelve to ease his asthma, then play in theatres for a living?

The trombone paid Holst's way as a student, with jobs at seaside resorts in summer and in London theatres in winter. He gave up orchestral playing in 1903 to concentrate on composing.

Which patriotic hymn, sung at Princess Diana's wedding and funeral, borrows the broad tune from Holst's Jupiter?

I Vow to Thee, My Country began as a poem by a British diplomat, and an overworked Holst was relieved to find it fitted a melody he had already written. It became a fixture of Remembrance services.

Which interest, picked up on a holiday in Spain with friends, did Gustav Holst call his 'pet vice'?

Astrology gave Holst the idea for The Planets, with each movement painting the character a planet is said to carry. He went on casting his friends' horoscopes for the rest of his life.

Which Christmas carol, a poem by Christina Rossetti, did Holst set to a hymn tune called Cranham?

In the Bleak Midwinter got a tune from Holst in 1906 that was simple enough for a whole congregation to sing. He named the tune Cranham after a village in Gloucestershire.

Which sport's World Cup anthem, World in Union, sets new lyrics to a melody from Holst's Jupiter?

Rugby gained the song for its 1991 tournament, when the soprano Kiri Te Kanawa made the first recording. New versions have been recorded for later tournaments, one of them by Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

How does the hidden choir fade to nothing at the end of Neptune in Holst's The Planets?

A door is slowly closed between the offstage singers and the hall until nothing more can be heard. Holst's daughter recalled that the first audience could not tell where the sound ended and silence began.

Which distant world did composer Colin Matthews add to Holst's The Planets as a new final movement in 2000?

Pluto was only discovered in 1930, long after the suite was finished, and Holst never wrote it a movement. Six years after the new piece was first played, astronomers reclassified it as a dwarf planet.

Which ancient language did Gustav Holst study in London so he could make his own translations of Indian hymns?

Sanskrit caught Holst's interest when he read about Indian scripture while touring with an opera company. He found the English versions unconvincing, so he enrolled as a student to translate the hymns himself.

Which children's animated series used the famous melody from Holst's Jupiter in its second-season episode Sleepytime?

Bluey carried the tune to a new generation of preschoolers and their parents. The same melody also serves as the theme of the English in the video game Civilization V.

In which English spa town was Gustav Holst born in 1874, in a house that is now a museum?

Cheltenham keeps Holst's birthplace open to visitors as a Victorian house museum. His father was organist and choirmaster at a church in the town and gave piano recitals there.

Which movement opens Holst's The Planets with a relentless five-beat rhythm, finished before the First World War began?

Mars is often heard as a picture of mechanised warfare, yet Holst completed it before the fighting broke out. He subtitled it the Bringer of War.

Which movement of The Planets was Gustav Holst's own favourite, opening with flutes and harps ticking like a clock?

Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age, moves as a slow procession that rises to a frightening climax before fading away. Holst said it brings not only physical decay but also a vision of fulfilment.

Which fellow composer, met as a student in 1895, became Gustav Holst's lifelong friend and chief musical critic?

Ralph Vaughan Williams and Holst played each other their unfinished pieces for the rest of Holst's life. At his friend's funeral, he conducted music by them both.

Which conductor led the 1918 premiere of Holst's The Planets with players who first saw the score two hours before?

Adrian Boult was asked by Holst himself, after a friend hired the hall and orchestra as a parting gift. A grateful Holst inscribed the score to the man who first made his suite shine in public.

Which famous English melody did Holst weave together with the dance tune Dargason in the finale of his St Paul's Suite?

Greensleeves enters on the cellos while the dance carries on, and the two tunes run together to the end. Holst had first tried the trick in an earlier suite for wind players.

Which novelist's Wessex inspired Egdon Heath, the orchestral piece Gustav Holst thought his most perfectly realised?

Thomas Hardy walked a real Dorset heath with Holst while the piece was being written, and accepted its dedication. He died only weeks before the first performance.

Which North African land, visited by Holst in 1908 on medical advice, inspired his orchestral suite Beni Mora?

Algeria gave Holst the street music he worked into the suite, after he heard a local musician repeat one phrase on a bamboo flute for over two hours. His finale repeats one short flute theme to the very end.

Which organisation, sending Gustav Holst to run music for troops in 1918, felt 'von Holst' looked too German?

The YMCA wanted volunteers to work with British soldiers awaiting demobilisation, so Holst dropped the 'von' by deed poll. An ancestor had only adopted the prefix to seem grander and attract pupils.

Holst's younger brother, the Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart, specialised in playing which kind of screen role?

Butlers and valets became the screen speciality of Holst's brother, who was born Emil von Holst. The pair were reunited in New York in 1932, when the composer arrived to lecture in America.

What was the first name of Holst's only child, a composer who became Benjamin Britten's assistant at Aldeburgh?

Imogen spent decades guarding her father's legacy, writing his biography and cataloguing his music. She gave up her job with Britten in 1964 partly to concentrate on that task.

Which famous English composer died in February 1934, just three months before Gustav Holst's own death that May?

Edward Elgar's death was followed within months by those of Holst and Frederick Delius, so English music lost three of its leading figures in a single year.

Which professor taught Gustav Holst composition in London, telling him his imitations of German opera would not do?

Charles Stanford was the one teacher who could get any pupil out of a technical mess, Holst said. Even so, Holst felt he learned more from his fellow students than from the staff.

Which Essex town, where Gustav Holst kept a weekend cottage, gave its name to his hymn tune drawn from Jupiter?

Thaxted was where Holst played the church organ and founded a Whitsun music festival in 1916, bringing his London students to perform alongside local people.

At which London adult education institution did Holst direct music from 1907, a post later held by Michael Tippett?

Morley College had not taken music very seriously before Holst arrived, and his exacting demands drove many students away at first. Its main music space now carries his name.

Whose long-lost stage work The Fairy-Queen did Holst's students revive in 1911, copying 1,500 pages of parts by hand?

Purcell's score had vanished soon after his death in 1695 and had only recently been found. Twenty-eight of Holst's students spent almost eighteen months copying the parts in their spare time.

Which part of west London, where Gustav Holst spent most of his life, names his 1930 piece commissioned by the BBC?

Hammersmith is where Holst taught for nearly thirty years and had joined a socialist club as a student. The original band version was first played in Washington by the United States Marine Band.

For which kind of ensemble did Holst write his First Suite in E-flat, a cornerstone of that group's repertoire?

Military band programmes were mostly popular music and orchestral transcriptions until this suite of 1909 helped show that serious original music could be written for them. A second suite followed two years later.

In which English cathedral city were Holst's ashes interred, beside a memorial to his favourite Tudor composer?

Chichester honours Weelkes, the madrigal writer Holst loved best, who had been the cathedral's organist. A new memorial to Holst himself was unveiled there in 2009.

What did St Paul's Girls' School include for Gustav Holst in its new music wing of 1913, to his lasting gratitude?

A soundproof room let Holst compose undisturbed, and he wrote the St Paul's Suite to mark the opening of the wing. He went on teaching at the school until his death.

In Gustav Holst's comic opera The Perfect Fool, what is unusual about the part written for the Fool himself?

He speaks one word, a flat 'no', and never sings a note. The plot baffled audiences in 1923, and only the opening ballet music is often performed today.

Which Shakespeare history play, in two parts, supplied the tavern scenes for Holst's opera At the Boar's Head?

Henry IV was Holst's sickbed reading in 1924, when he noticed that Shakespeare's lines fitted the rhythm of old English dance tunes. He built almost the whole score from those borrowed melodies.

Which American poet's verse did Gustav Holst set repeatedly, including The Mystic Trumpeter and his Ode to Death?

Walt Whitman mattered so much to Holst that he named an early overture after him. Holst is said to have found his true voice as a composer in the earlier of the two pieces.

Which Indian epic gave Gustav Holst the story of his chamber opera Savitri, in which a wife outwits Death?

The Mahabharata story needs only three solo singers, a wordless women's chorus and a dozen players in Holst's version, which he meant to be performed in the open air or in a small building.

At which American university did Gustav Holst lecture in 1932, before an ulcer laid him low for weeks?

Harvard brought Holst to America for six months, and he enjoyed the teaching but hated the reporters and photographers who trailed him. His health declined after he sailed home.

Which Arts and Crafts designer hosted the socialist meetings the young Holst attended at Kelmscott House in London?

Morris drew Holst in more through comradeship than politics. The student ended up conducting the club's choir, where he fell in love with a soprano named Isobel, his future wife.

Which painful condition in Gustav Holst's right arm ended his boyhood hopes of a career as a concert pianist?

Neuritis made his arm feel, he said, like a jelly overcharged with electricity. Writing out scores became so hard that two colleagues he called his scribes helped him copy The Planets.

Which range of English hills, near his birthplace, names the early symphony Gustav Holst completed in 1900?

The Cotswolds symphony has a slow movement written as a lament for a socialist designer who had inspired the student Holst. Decades later he holidayed in the same hills with his brother.

Whose Five Pieces for Orchestra probably prompted Holst's first title for The Planets, Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra?

Schoenberg's set had been played in London in 1912 and again in 1914, and Holst went to one of the performances and owned a copy of the score.

What did Gustav Holst do on the set of The Bells, the 1931 British film for which he wrote the score?

He appeared as an extra in a crowd scene, which amused him. The film and his only music for the cinema are both now lost, so nobody can pick him out.

Which opera composer did student Gustav Holst hear from the Covent Garden gallery, soon becoming an ardent devotee?

Wagner at first repelled Holst, who recoiled from Götterdämmerung in 1892 until a friend talked him round. The spell ran so deep that he later dismissed most of his early pieces as horrors.