Gustav Holst
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40 free Gustav Holst trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Gustav Holst wrote one of the most recognisable pieces of orchestral music of the twentieth century, then spent the rest of his life trying to dodge the fame it brought him. He refused interviews, turned down honours and went on teaching schoolgirls and evening-class students for most of his career. This quiz gathers the best Gustav Holst fun facts into multiple-choice questions. It covers his childhood and the poor health that shaped his choices, the making and first performance of The Planets, the hymn and carol tunes sung by millions who may never have heard his name, and the friends, poets and far-off places that fed his music. There are also questions on his lesser-known operas and suites, and on the afterlife of his melodies in sport, cinema and television. The early questions suit curious listeners and students meeting Holst for the first time, while the later ones will test concert-goers and players who know his suites from the inside. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the quiz works as a quick study aid as well as a game.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which instrument did Gustav Holst take up at twelve to ease his asthma, then play in theatres for a living?
Trombone
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.
Q 02Which patriotic hymn, sung at Princess Diana's wedding and funeral, borrows the broad tune from Holst's Jupiter?
I Vow to Thee, My Country
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.
Q 03Which interest, picked up on a holiday in Spain with friends, did Gustav Holst call his 'pet vice'?
Astrology
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.
Q 04Which Christmas carol, a poem by Christina Rossetti, did Holst set to a hymn tune called Cranham?
In the Bleak Midwinter
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.
Q 05Which sport's World Cup anthem, World in Union, sets new lyrics to a melody from Holst's Jupiter?
Rugby
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.
Q 06How does the hidden choir fade to nothing at the end of Neptune in Holst's The Planets?
A door is slowly closed
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.
Q 07Which distant world did composer Colin Matthews add to Holst's The Planets as a new final movement in 2000?
Pluto
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.
Q 08Which ancient language did Gustav Holst study in London so he could make his own translations of Indian hymns?
Sanskrit
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.
Q 09Which children's animated series used the famous melody from Holst's Jupiter in its second-season episode Sleepytime?
Bluey
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.
Q 10In which English spa town was Gustav Holst born in 1874, in a house that is now a museum?
Cheltenham
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.
Q 11Which movement opens Holst's The Planets with a relentless five-beat rhythm, finished before the First World War began?
Mars
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.
Q 12Which movement of The Planets was Gustav Holst's own favourite, opening with flutes and harps ticking like a clock?
Saturn
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.
Q 13Which fellow composer, met as a student in 1895, became Gustav Holst's lifelong friend and chief musical critic?
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Q 21Which famous English composer died in February 1934, just three months before Gustav Holst's own death that May?
Edward Elgar
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.
Q 22Which professor taught Gustav Holst composition in London, telling him his imitations of German opera would not do?
Charles Stanford
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.
Q 23Which Essex town, where Gustav Holst kept a weekend cottage, gave its name to his hymn tune drawn from Jupiter?
Thaxted
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.
Q 14Which conductor led the 1918 premiere of Holst's The Planets with players who first saw the score two hours before?
Adrian Boult
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.
Q 15Which famous English melody did Holst weave together with the dance tune Dargason in the finale of his St Paul's Suite?
Greensleeves
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.
Q 16Which novelist's Wessex inspired Egdon Heath, the orchestral piece Gustav Holst thought his most perfectly realised?
Thomas Hardy
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.
Q 17Which North African land, visited by Holst in 1908 on medical advice, inspired his orchestral suite Beni Mora?
Algeria
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.
Q 18Which organisation, sending Gustav Holst to run music for troops in 1918, felt 'von Holst' looked too German?
The YMCA
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.
Q 19Holst's younger brother, the Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart, specialised in playing which kind of screen role?
Butlers
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.
Q 20What was the first name of Holst's only child, a composer who became Benjamin Britten's assistant at Aldeburgh?
Imogen
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.
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.
Q 24At which London adult education institution did Holst direct music from 1907, a post later held by Michael Tippett?
Morley College
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.
Q 25Whose long-lost stage work The Fairy-Queen did Holst's students revive in 1911, copying 1,500 pages of parts by hand?
Purcell
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.
Q 26Which part of west London, where Gustav Holst spent most of his life, names his 1930 piece commissioned by the BBC?
Hammersmith
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.
Q 27For which kind of ensemble did Holst write his First Suite in E-flat, a cornerstone of that group's repertoire?
Military band
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.
Q 28In which English cathedral city were Holst's ashes interred, beside a memorial to his favourite Tudor composer?
Chichester
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.
Q 29What did St Paul's Girls' School include for Gustav Holst in its new music wing of 1913, to his lasting gratitude?
A soundproof room
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.
Q 30In Gustav Holst's comic opera The Perfect Fool, what is unusual about the part written for the Fool himself?
He speaks one word
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.