Imogen Holst
Imogen Clare Holst CBE (née von Holst;[1] 12 April 1907 – 9 March 1984) was a British composer, arranger, conductor, teacher, musicologist, and festival administrator. The only child of the composer Gustav Holst, she is particularly known for her educational work at Dartington Hall in the 1940s, and for her 20 years as joint artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. In addition to composing music, she wrote composer biographies, much educational material, and several books on the life and works of her father.
From a young age, Holst showed precocious talent in composing and performance. After attending Eothen School and St Paul's Girls' School, she entered the Royal College of Music, where she developed her skills as a conductor and won several prizes for composing. Unable to follow her initial ambitions to be a pianist or a dancer for health reasons, Holst spent most of the 1930s teaching, and as a full-time organiser for the English Folk Dance and Song Society. These duties reduced her compositional activities, although she made many arrangements of folksongs. After serving as an organiser for the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts at the start of the Second World War, in 1942 she began working at Dartington. In her nine years there she established Dartington as a major centre of music education and activity.
In the early 1950s Holst became Benjamin Britten's musical assistant, moved to Aldeburgh, and began helping with the organisation of the annual Aldeburgh Festival. In 1956 she became joint artistic director of the festival, and during the following 20 years helped it to a position of pre-eminence in British musical life. In 1964 she gave up her work as Britten's assistant to resume her own compositional career and to concentrate on the preservation of her father's musical legacy. Her own music is not widely known and has received little critical attention; much of it is unpublished and unperformed. The first recordings dedicated to her works, issued in 2009 and 2012, were warmly received by critics. She was appointed CBE in 1975 and received numerous academic honours. She died at Aldeburgh and is buried in the churchyard there.
Career[edit]
European travels, 1930–31[edit]
Holst spent much of the period between September 1930 and May 1931 travelling. A hectic visit to Liège in September, for the International Society of Contemporary Music Congress, was followed immediately by a three-month round trip, to Scandinavia, Germany, Austria and Hungary, returning to England via Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin and Amsterdam. Her musical experiences included a Mozart pilgrimage in Salzburg, performances of Der Rosenkavalier and Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Vienna State Opera, Bach in Berlin and Mahler's Seventh Symphony in Amsterdam.[34] On 1 February 1932 she left England again, this time for Italy. After a two-month tour Holst came home with mixed views on Italian music-making. She concluded that "the Italians are a nation of singers ... But music is a different language in that part of the world". Back in London, she decided that despite her experiences, "if it is music one is wanting, there is no place like London."[35][36]
Later career[edit]
Gustav Holst's centenary was celebrated in 1974, when Imogen published a Thematic Catalogue of Gustav Holst's Music and founded the Holst Birthplace Museum in Cheltenham.[109] The centenary was the occasion for the publication of the first volume of a facsimile edition of Gustav Holst's manuscripts, on which Imogen worked with the help of the composer Colin Matthews.[110] Three more facsimile volumes followed in the years up to 1983, at which point the increasing costs, and Imogen's failing health led to the abandonment of the project.[111] As part of the 1974 centenary, she negotiated performances of Savitri and The Wandering Scholar at Aldeburgh and Sadler's Wells, and helped to arrange exhibitions of Gustav Holst's life and works at Aldeburgh and the Royal Festival Hall.[109]
Apart from her books concerned with her father's life and works, Holst continued to write on other aspects of music. In addition to numerous articles she published a short study of the Renaissance composer William Byrd (1972)[112] and a handbook for conductors of amateur choirs (1973).[113] She continued to compose, usually short pieces but with occasional larger-scale orchestral works such as the Woodbridge Suite (1970) and the Deben Calendar (1977), the latter a series of twelve sketches depicting the River Deben in Suffolk at different phases of the year.[114] Her last major composition was a String Quintet, written in 1982 and performed in October of that year by the Endellion Quartet, augmented by the cellist Steven Isserlis.[115]
In April 1979 Holst was present when the Queen Mother opened the new Britten–Pears School building in Snape. The building included a new library—the Gustav Holst Library—to which Holst had donated a large amount of material, including books which her father had used in his own teaching career.[116] She had intended that, after 1977, her retirement from the Aldeburgh Festival would be total, but she made an exception in 1980 when she organised a 70th birthday celebration concert for Pears.[115]
Publication details refer to the book's first UK publication.
Imogen Holst also wrote numerous articles, pamphlets, essays, introductions and programme notes during the period 1935–1984.[n 13]