‘I’m not really a composer,’ Imogen Holst declared when she went on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs in 1972. Even when pressed, she gave the impression that she knew very little about music at all. She lamented that she was ‘really not very bright I’m afraid’, especially at school, and of her time at the newly formed Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts in World War II, when she travelled across the country promoting community music-making, she had little to say except that she had been one of a group of ‘missionary-minded spinsters’.
Imogen Holst – a talented, though modest, composer
She had worked with Benjamin Britten for years as an amanuensis – although ‘amanuensis’ doesn’t fully communicate the extent of the creative support that she offered the composer – a period she described as ‘the most wonderful experience in learning about music’. When asked which of her own compositions pleased her the most, she simply replied that she was ‘grateful that I know enough about it to be able to edit music’, immediately moving on to talk about Purcell instead, and her edition of The Fairy Queen.
If Imogen Holst doesn’t count a composer, though, it’s very unclear who would. She penned over 200 original works and arrangements, including a ballet, an opera, a Mass, a violin concerto, oboe concerto, songs, hymns, choral works, chamber pieces, orchestral suites and incidental music. It is only very recently, though, that her reputation as a composer has started to grow, following the publication and recording of major works including her 1927 Mass in A Minor, 1929 symphonic poem Persephone and 1930 Suite for Unaccompanied Viola. This, however, is only scratching the surface of her compositional output. The majority of her catalogue has yet to be recorded. Modest to a fault, she never pressed for recognition for any of her own works. She preferred to let others take the limelight – especially her father, Gustav Holst, and Britten, to whom she was devoted.
Imogen Holst, the early years...
From her earliest years, Imogen was immersed in music. Her parents made sure she had the finest musical education available, to say nothing of the constant tuition she received from Gustav. ‘I began by dancing to what he played for me,’ she remembered. ‘By the time I was about four he taught me folk songs to sing, and we used to play duets on the piano. He’d teach me tunes to play on the black notes, and I’d sit on his lap and then he’d play very exciting things with a hand either side of me, and I was so young I thought I was doing it all!’
Her parents never seem to have pushed her, though. When she started composing at 11, Gustav wrote to his wife Isobel that ‘we don’t want her to be forced into a prodigy’, but he would ‘be quite willing for her to specialise in music even at her present age’. And for her part, Imogen adored learning music. In one letter to her father, she wrote that her theory lessons with Jane Joseph were ‘ripping’, and violin lessons with André Mangeot ‘topping’.
A youth marred by health issues... but a love of dance
It was dance, though, that captured Imogen’s imagination the most. She desperately wanted to be a dancer, but her hopes were dashed in 1921 when she was rejected on health grounds from the Ginner-Mawer School of Dance and Drama. Health troubles would be a recurring concern throughout her life – after dance she turned her attention to piano, but phlebitis prevented her from pursuing it as a career. Even though she couldn’t dance professionally, it remained a life-long love and interest. Through the 1920s she went on numerous folk dancing courses and summer schools where she was ‘folk-dancing absolutely every minute of the day’, and she became a member of the English Folk Dance Society, where she would later work as a member of staff.
Dance permeates all her compositions, and her style is infused with lightness and movement, even in her most sombre works. In her late sixties, she confessed that ‘even now if I’m learning a new bit of music that’s difficult, I begin to learn the phrasing by dancing it’.
Imogen Holst - a love of Baroque music
Holst’s earliest substantial compositions date from her time at the Royal College of Music (RCM), where she studied composition with George Dyson, having previously studied privately with Herbert Howells. Her string quartet Phantasy won the 1928 Cobbett Prize for chamber composition, while Persephone received critical praise for having ‘confident and clearly coloured scoring’ (Daily Mail) and a ‘sense of colour and use of provocative climax’ (Daily Telegraph). It was also at the RCM that Holst began to develop her admiration for Baroque and early music. Not only did she constantly hear ‘the sound of Bach or Handel being practised with energetic determination’, but she had access to the College’s library to study different editions of Baroque works, learning how editorial decisions impacted on performance, and she had a cohort of fellow enthusiasts with whom she could discuss new recordings.
‘Monteverdi’s music let in a great light’, she said, and ‘the recording of some of his madrigals under the direction of Nadia Boulanger came as a revelation’. She would become ‘a pivotal figure in the early music world’, as one colleague put it, not only by creating her own critical editions but by conducting this repertoire with the choir she founded, the Purcell Singers, and fostering a love of early music in future generations through her teaching.
Imogen Holst - an inspiring teacher
No assessment of Holst’s legacy could be complete without considering the impact she had on music education. She taught in schools and at Bryanston Summer School alongside more famous pedagogues such as Nadia Boulanger, and under Holst’s direction the music course at Dartington became an institution that shaped the lives of multiple generations of British composers.
One of her students, Rosamund Strode, described her teaching work as ‘dedicated and extraordinary’, observing that ‘she knew exactly how, and when, to push her victims in at the deep end’, and that ‘it wouldn’t be long before her confidence in them took over, and they would be swimming easily while she beamed approval from the bank’.
Holst had extremely exacting standards (she rehearsed Bach’s B Minor Mass at Dartington for three straight years), and she imparted both her dedication and her boundless enthusiasm for the music she loved to her pupils. She composed extensively for amateurs and school groups, from short instrumental works to choral pieces, and also wrote books for music learners.
Her educational writing includes volumes on theory and conducting, and she brought her love of music from around the globe to The Wonderful World of Music, which she co-wrote with Britten. She travelled to India in 1950 to study at Rabindranath Tagore’s University in West Bengal, describing her days there as ‘among the most exciting I have ever known’, and the trip influenced not only her teaching but also her composition: her Ten Indian Folk Tunes for recorder are arrangements of Punjabi folks songs collected by one of the university’s tutors, Prabhakar Chinchore.
Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival
During the 1950s, much of Holst’s time was consumed by Britten and by the Aldeburgh Festival, of which she was one of the artistic directors. Under her leadership the festival blossomed, attracting an international roster of musicians performing a vast range of repertoire stretching from early music to contemporary repertoire.
Even with her festival duties to attend to, however, she continued to compose. As always, community music-making was at the heart of much of her music, these years including a cantata written for the National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds, The Sun’s Journey (1965), the Trianon Suite for orchestra (1965) premiered by the Trianon Youth Orchestra, and the 1967 Leiston Suite for the Leiston Modern School brass quartet.
But she also found time to compose for professional ensembles. Her String Trio No. 2 (1962) was premiered at the Festival, as was her 1968 Duo for Viola and Piano, while her exquisite The Fall of the Leaf (1962) for solo cello was premiered at the Wigmore Hall by an ex-pupil, Pamela Hind O’Malley, and later taken up by Steven Isserlis. Occasionally, she was able to bring these two worlds into dialogue with each other: the Variations on ‘Loth to Depart’ (1962) is for string quartet and two string orchestras, one of which is described as ‘less experienced’ in her notes to the score. The first performance was given by the Rural Music Schools Association, conducted by Adrian Boult, no less.
Imogen Holst... a quality of her own
When Ursula Vaughan Williams came to write about Holst in the 1960s, she observed that ‘everything she does has a quality all her own, where perception and imagination grace knowledge and mastery of her subject’.
Few musicians have had such a wide-ranging impact on music in the UK as Imogen Holst, having turned her hand to everything from composition to conducting, teaching, public speaking, musicology, concert organising and musical administration. The full legacy of her work has yet to fully be understood – but as a composer, at least, new recordings and publications are paving the way for her to emerge from the combined shadows of Britten and Gustav Holst, and to receive the acclaim that her own modesty never allowed her to pursue.
Imogen Holst's style
Folk Music
Folk music was a constant inspiration for Imogen Holst. The folk music collector Cecil Sharp (see p42) was a prominent figure in her life, and she worked for the English Folk Dance and Song Society. She wrote many arrangements of folk songs, ranging from the British Isles to Europe, India and the US.
Early Music
Holst adored early music, and conducted, arranged and made critical editions of works by composers including Purcell, JS Bach, Blow, Palestrina and Arne. Her love of Baroque and early music shaped not only her approach to harmony, but also her thinking about musical form.
Modality
Stemming from her interest in both folk music and early music, and the influence of both her father and Vaughan Williams, much of Holst’s music makes extensive use of modes.
Dance
Dance animates Holst’s music. Several of her arrangements are of dances, and she uses dance forms such as the Cinquepace, Saraband and Gigue in her Suite for unaccompanied viola. Even in works that don’t explicitly engage with dance, her style is driven by lively movement.
