Holst

Abstract When Holst’s daughter, Imogen, and I were students at the Royal College of Music in the early 1920s, Holst was at the centre”point of his public success. This success had been occasioned by the appearance in 1919 of The Planets (without ‘Venus’ and ‘Neptune’) and in the following year The Hymn of Jesus. Both works were publicly performed in London by the Royal Philharmonic Society. The Hymn of Jesus was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece. According to The Times, Holst had ‘achieved the position, rare for an Englishman, of being a really popular composer’. Such success disconcerted him: he wrote to a friend, ‘Woe to you when all men speak well of your But for those of us embarking on a musical career at that time, it was all part of the exciting spectrum of English musical life—later to be described as a ‘second Renaissance’ in English music.