Rebel Britannia

21st September 1874:

Leader of the Can't Sing Choir, pioneer of musical education for women, close collaborator with the notorious Red Vicar of Thaxted, involuntary composer of I Vow to Thee, My Country, and composer of Britain's most recorded piece of music ever, Gustavus von Holst was born in Cheltenham on this date, into a family of musicians and music teachers.

In his teens he was employed as an organist and choirmaster. Physical frailties forced him to abandon the piano, and take up the trombone instead. Earnings from that financed his studies in composition. Except for one or two brief sabbaticals, paid for by wealthy patrons, Holst never worked as a full-time composer. To the very end of his life he taught music at private schools, and for much of it he was variously a trombonist in orchestras and theatres, college lecturer, church organist and choir leader.

Holst encountered socialist ideas when he moved to London in the 1890s. He attended meetings at William Morris's house, where George Bernard Shaw and Morris himself were among the speakers. It was in his capacity as conductor of the Hammersmith Socialist Choir that Gustav met his future wife, Isobel. On the choir's processions, Holst would sit in a cart playing the harmonium. He taught at a college for working people, too, and took his choirs to the slums of the East End.

He made gradual progress as a composer during the next few years, but it's in 1914 that he really enters Rebel Britannia's purview. Refused for any sort of war service due to his lifelong poor health, and possibly because of his Teutonic name, he continued his habit of going on country walks with fellow composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in pursuit of one of their great mutual interests, English folk songs.

In the small town or large village of Thaxted, Essex, one day in 1913, they had entered the local church to discover that it was decorated with the Sinn Fein banner and the Red Flag of revolution. As Gustav subsequently learned, the vicar, Conrad Noel, had forbidden the Union Flag from his workplace on the grounds that it represented imperialism and belonged to the financiers.

The Reverend Noel, his extraordinary battles with the church authorities, and the remarkable people he gathered around him in Thaxted, must be a separate story. For now, we can say simply that Gustav had found his true home. His close friendship with Noel led to the village becoming a famous centre of music, as well as of revolutionary socialism. He became closely involved with Noel's church on the choral side, and would at other times be found cycling round the area delivering copies of socialist newspapers. He and Noel also operated a press together, producing pamphlets such as Is Jesus the Revolutionary Leader?

As a man, and as a composer, Holst had numerous interests: Hindu mysticism, English poetry and folklore, dance and ritual, and Tudor and Elizabethan music. It was curiosity about astrology which led to his most famous work, The Planets, a seven-movement orchestral suite written during World War One.

Some critics were horrified by the sometimes startling novelty of Holst's work, and reviews condemned it as merely "noisy." But it quite quickly became one of the nation's favourite orchestral compositions; it's reckoned that no other piece by a British composer has been recorded so many times.

Gustav Holst wasn't a notably cheerful bloke, and celebrity brought him little pleasure. He simply hid from it whenever he could. When the town of his birth held a Holst Festival, he escaped it by going on a walking holiday in Yorkshire. The Royal College of Music did manage to elect him as a Fellow, but only by not telling him in advance that they were going to do it.

He carried on working - both at the day jobs (his contemporaries said he was as great a teacher as he was a composer, with his emphasis on practical music-making), and taking on far too many commissions to write music for military bands, schools and choirs. His health, always bad, got worse. Having undergone a successful operation for a duodenal ulcer in May 1934, he died of heart failure days later.

If The Planets is what Holst is remembered for, then within that suite it's movement four, Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, which is perhaps most familiar. Based on it is the much-loved, much-despised hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country, a controversially martial and nationalistic poem written by a retired diplomat.

Holst agreed to the pairing of words and music, and apparently regretted doing so for the rest of his life. The idea that patriotism is "the love that asks no questions" could hardly be further from the beliefs of Holst or the sermons of Noel. Gustav Holst's own name for the tune, minus its objectionable lyrics, was Thaxted - which seems a lot more appropriate and, somehow, a lot more English.

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Sources:

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/marxist-notes-on-music-january-22-2023

Morning Star 30 December 2016

www.citychoir.org.uk/2013/06/holsts-the-planets-symphony-hall-15th-june-2013/

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/gustav-holst-brought-down-to-earth-2267832.html

https://hymnsocietygbi.org.uk/1982/01/treasure-no-47-i-vow-to-thee-my-country

https://adam-yamey-writes.com/

https://hundredparishes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/GUSTAV-HOLST.pdf

https://thehistorypress.co.uk/article/gustav-holst-and-the-planets/