Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst was born in Cheltenham in September 1874, into a family of Latvian-Swedish descent on his father’s side. He studied at the Royal College of Music from 1893, where Charles Villiers Stanford taught him composition and where he met Ralph Vaughan Williams, beginning a friendship that lasted the rest of his life. Neuritis in his right arm ruled out the piano career he had originally intended; he made his living as a trombonist with the Carl Rosa Opera and the Scottish Orchestra, then as a teacher.

He taught at St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith from 1905 and at Morley College from 1907, and held both posts for most of his career. His major works followed: the chamber opera *Savitri* (1908), *The Planets* (composed 1914–17, given its first public performance in 1920), the *Hymn of Jesus* (1917), the operas *The Perfect Fool* and *At the Boar’s Head*, *Egdon Heath* (1927), and the *Choral Fantasia* (1930). His interests in Hindu literature, English folk song, Hardy, and astrology each fed his work in different ways.

Holst was made an Honorary Doctor of Music at Leeds University in 1928. He died in London in May 1934 after surgery for a duodenal ulcer. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his orchestral, choral and operatic work.