Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst , 1874-1934, English composer, studied at the Royal College of Music. Grieg, Richard Strauss, and Ralph Vaughan Williams influenced his early work, but most of his music is highly original. Outstanding compositions are The Planets (1918), a suite for orchestra; The Hymn of Jesus (1920), for chorus and orchestra; The Perfect Fool (1923), an opera; and Egdon Heath (1928), an orchestral piece.

Bibliography: See biography (1938) and study (2d ed. 1968) by his daughter, Imogen Holst.

Holst, Gustav ( Gustavus Theodore von) (1874–1934) English composer. His early works were often influenced by Hinduism, as in the opera Sita (1906), and English folksong, as in Somerset Rhapsody (1907). Among his works are several operas, including The Perfect Fool (1922), songs, chamber music, and the popular orchestral suite The Planets (1914–16).

Holst, Gustav (1874–1934). Of German/Swedish ancestry, he was one of the most original English composers of his day and an influential teacher. Holst studied composition with Stanford at London's Royal College of Music alongside his lifelong friend Vaughan Williams, with whom he shared a passionate interest in folk‐song. The sparse economy of his later works, together with their adventurous harmonies and use of bi‐tonality, was regarded by many contemporaries as excessively cerebral. The Planets (1914–16, first performed 1919), however, was an immediate and lasting success.