LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Holst
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English composers of Holst's generation were at a disadvantage in that they wrote at a time when Igor Stravinsky began to dominate the international musical scene. In the late 1920s, when Stravinsky turned to neoclassic ideals, composers who wrote symphonic poems and folk-based choral pieces were considered old-fashioned. Holst was an honest, if unfashionable, composer, and he did not follow the musical fashions of his day. He was always true to his background and convictions, and his music impresses by its sincerity and highly professional workmanship.
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Holst's mother was English, and he was bought up in a house that resonated with music. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London. He settled down to a life as a church organist around Cheltenham until neuritis forced him to abandon performing on keyboard instruments. For some years he made his living as a trombone player, but eventually gravitated towards teaching, becoming master at St. Paul's Girls' School in 1905 and director of music at Morley College in 1907, posts he successfully retained until the end of his life. The teaching work gave him the drive and the stimulus to compose. He ... became an avid collector of Folk Song, spurred on by his friend Ralph Vaughan Williams.
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Holst had a lifetime of poor health worsened by a concussion during a backward fall from the conductor's podium, from which he never fully recovered.[5] In his final four years, Holst grew ill with stomach problems. One of his last compositions, The Brook Green Suite, named after the land on which St Paul’s Girls’ School[4] was built, was performed for the first time a few months before his death. Holst died on May 25, 1934, of complications following stomach surgery, in London.[8] His ashes were interred at Chichester Cathedral in West Sussex, with Bishop George Bell giving the memorial oration at the funeral.
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Holst worked on the piece from 1913 to 1916, beginning with Mars and ending with Mercury. His neuritis made it difficult for him to copy out the parts, so he wrote a two-piano version for his students and teaching staff, notating the orchestration which was then copied out by others. It was several years... before the full work was performed, in part because the cost of hiring the augmented orchestra was difficult during wartime: the piece requires two harps, celesta, organ, varied percussion, and a full complement of bass instruments including bass flute, bass clarinet, bass tuba, bass trombone, contrabassoon, and the seldom-used bass oboe. It was first performed privately on September 29, 1918 as a present to Holst from his friend and patron Balfour Gardiner, with Adrian Boult conducting the New Queen's Hall Orchestra. The first public performance was given on November 15, 1920, when the work met with immediate success.
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Further, Holst offers a humorous and powerful satire of a learned father to deconstruct Pockels’ derogatory narrative of the learned mother. When a child is dangerously ill and the learned man’s wife looks to him for advice and comfort, he is too busy researching the question of whether Romulus’ wetnurse was truly a wolf or instead a woman named "Wolf." When his wife falls ill, he fails to notice or fetch a doctor, and is bewildered when brought the news of her death. If he belongs "zu der Klasse der schönen Geister," ... he composes a praiseworthy history of her life! Until he can find a second wife, he must undertake management of the household and upbringing of children. An expert on how Persians and Spartans raised their children, he is incapable of imparting culture to his own.
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The truth of Holst's stay at Thaxted is probably more complex that the story given by his daughter Imogen in her famous biography. Conrad Le Dispenser Noel owed his appointment to Thaxted Church to patron of the living, the eccentric Countess of Warwick, the owner of nearby Easton Lodge, one of the grandest of the Essex estates. In Thaxted church, Noel became famous for his Plainsong, incense, flower-processions, folk-dancing and radical politics. Noel set up a "Chapel of John Ball, priest and martyr, 1381," behind a little panelled door. Noel flew a red flag over his church during the General Strike, and on every May Day. He ... tied the knot between folk music and socialism.
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Holst