Gustav Holst, best known for his great orchestral works, had a love of vocal music, particularly opera, the evolution of which was a microcosm of his general development.

MicrocosmGustav Holst is not well known as an opera composer, yet he was quite prolific in this area--a surprise to most listeners. His opera writing alone is a microcosm of the evolution he made overall as a composer.

The early operas

He began composing opera before his student days at the Royal College of Music in London. The first, Lansdown Castle (1892) was a comedy that resembled Gilbert & Sullivan: a “numbers” opera with dialogue, and its distinctive “patter” singing. Holst’s first influence was that of Gilbert & Sullivan--all the rage in English opera at the time. Their idiom dominated his next 3 operas: The Revoke of 1895, The Magic Mirror (1896—unfinished), and The Idea (c. 1896).

By the time The Youth’s Choice op 11 appeared in 1902 Holst was a professional musician, and as a composer he began the struggle to find his own sound. The Youth’s Choice was the first of Holst’s operas for which he wrote the libretto himself; also, it was more “fluid” in line and could not be said to imitate Gilbert & Sullivan any longer, for a new musical passion had taken hold of him around the turn of the century: he fell under the spell of Wagner’s through-composed, majestic sound.

The middle "Sanskrit" period

The operas of Holst’s early years were all one-act works; now he yearned to do something on a grand scale. Helpful here was his newly-found love of Sanskrit literature which provided him with a suitably grand subject: Indian mythology.

Sita op 23 (1906) was Holst’s only three-act opera and told the story of Rama and Sita (Ramayana). It was Wagnerian in scope; however Holst felt uncomfortable working with an opera of this size, and it would be his only one. Important now was that he discovered his own sound, freeing himself from outside influences, but having learned from them.

His strength was in the one-act format, and in 1909 came his masterpiece Savitri op 25, inspired by a story from the Mahabharata. Only thirty minutes long, it combined a classic story with minimal forces (only three singers, a hidden female chorus and a small chamber ensemble) and a score fashioned from tightly woven leitmotifs and restrained orchestration. It is the “sound” of the mature Holst that listeners recognize.

Post-war attitudeHolst did not return to opera until 1920; after the First World War composers felt the need for lighter music, preferring comedy and smaller ensembles, and Holst was no exception.

He produced three comic operas: The Perfect Fool op 39 (1920-22) was an original story by the composer; in At the Boar’s Head op 42 (1924) Holst took only the Falstaff scenes from Shakespeare’s Henry IV linking them together to form a libretto; finally, The Wandering Scholar op 50 (1930), a French folk tale. Holst was thoroughly at ease with the medium; the technique was less sophisticated than that of Savitri, but humour was the inspiration now.

The late period

From Student to ArtistIn a genre not really associated with Gustav Holst one can see the evolution of a composer from student strongly influenced by his musical surroundings, to a composer finding his own personality, and finally to the mature artist at the height of creativity in a changing world.

Sources

Holst, I. Holst’s ‘At the Boar’s Head’. The Musical Times 123, no. 1671, 1982, pp 321-22.

Holst, I. The Music of Gustav Holst and Holst’s Music Reconsidered. London: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Ottaway, H. Holst as an Opera Composer. The Musical Times, 115, no. 1576, 1974, p 473.

Short, M. Gustav Holst: The Man and His Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Tovey, D.F. The Perfect Fool; or, the Perfect Opera. The Musical Times 64, no. 965, July 1923, pp 464-65.

Trend, J.B. Savitri, an Opera from the Sanskrit. Music and Letters 2, no. 4, October 1921, pp 345-50.