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Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed a large number of other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success.
Holst's distinctive compositional style was the product of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. The subsequent inspiration of the English folksong revival of the early 20th century, and the example of such rising modern composers as Maurice Ravel, led Holst to develop and refine an individual style.
There were professional musicians in the previous three generations of Holst's family and it was clear from his early years that he would follow the same calling. He hoped to become a pianist, but was prevented by neuritis in his right arm. Despite his father's reservations, he pursued a career as a composer, studying at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. Unable to support himself by his compositions, he played the trombone professionally and later became a teacher—a great one, according to his colleague Ralph Vaughan Williams. Among other teaching activities he built up a strong tradition of performance at Morley College, where he served as musical director from 1907 until 1924, and pioneered music education for women at St Paul's Girls' School, where he taught from 1905 until his death in 1934. He was the founder of a series of Whitsun music festivals, which ran from 1916 for the remainder of his life.
Holst's works were played frequently in the early years of the 20th century, but it was not until the international success of The Planets in the years immediately after the First World War that he became a well-known figure. A shy man, he did not welcome this fame, and preferred to be left in peace to compose and teach. In his later years his uncompromising, personal style of composition struck many music lovers as too austere, and his brief popularity declined. Nevertheless, he was a significant influence on a number of younger English composers, including Edmund Rubbra, Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten. Apart from The Planets and a handful of other works, his music was generally neglected until the 1980s, when recordings of much of his output became available.
Holst's absorption of folksong, not only in the melodic sense but in terms of its simplicity and economy of expression, helped to develop a style that many of his contemporaries, even admirers, found austere and cerebral. This is contrary to the popular identification of Holst with The Planets, which Matthews believes has masked his status as a composer of genuine originality. Against charges of coldness in the music, Imogen cites Holst's characteristic "sweeping modal tunes moving reassuringly above the steps of a descending bass", while Michael Kennedy points to the 12 Humbert Wolfe settings of 1929, and the 12 Welsh folksong settings for unaccompanied chorus of 1930–31, as works of true warmth.
Many of the characteristics that Holst employed — unconventional time signatures, rising and falling scales, ostinato, bitonality and occasional polytonality — set him apart from other English composers. Vaughan Williams remarked that Holst always said in his music what he wished to say, directly and concisely; "He was not afraid of being obvious when the occasion demanded, nor did he hesitate to be remote when remoteness expressed his purpose". Kennedy has surmised that Holst's economy of style was in part a product of the composer's poor health: "the effort of writing it down compelled an artistic economy which some felt was carried too far". However, as an experienced instrumentalist and orchestra member, Holst understood music from the standpoint of his players and made sure that, however challenging, their parts were always practicable. According to his pupil Jane Joseph, Holst fostered in performance "a spirit of practical comradeship ... none could know better than he the boredom possible to a professional player, and the music that rendered boredom impossible".