Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) was born in Cheltenham and spent most of his working life in London. Alongside composing he was a teacher throughout his career, most lastingly at St Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, where he taught from 1905 until his death. His closest friend was Ralph Vaughan Williams, with whom he shared a love of English folk song, heard in works such as A Somerset Rhapsody. His curiosity ranged much further afield: he learned Sanskrit in order to set Hindu texts, and his reading in astrology gave him the plan for The Planets, the orchestral suite that made him internationally known in the years after the First World War. A shy man, he did not welcome that fame, and the sparer music of his later years never matched the suite’s popularity. He generally avoided the standard forms of symphony, sonata and string quartet in favour of suites and unconventional groupings of pieces.