The bard pays homage to his two muses: his wife and his football club
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Marxist notes on music: January 22, 2023
Time to celebrate Gustav Holst, an innovator who helped bring brass band instruments into the orchestra and wrote for working-class musicians
LIFE IN PICTURES: (L to R) Gustav Holst, left, and Ralph Vaughan Williams walking in the Malvern Hills, September 1921; The house in Barnes where Holst lived between 1908 and 1913; Holst caricatured by F Sancha as ‘The Bringer of Jollity’ c1921
[(L to R) William Gillies Whittaker/CC - Peter Trimming/CC - Public domain]
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by an incoherent show that fails to question stereotypical assumptions about the Soviet Union
JOHN McINALLY welcomes a rigorous class analysis of the history and exploitation of sectarianism by the Scottish ruling elite
WILL STONE, JAMES WALSH and MARIA DUARTE review Souleymane’s Story, Sunlight, Good Fortune, and After The Hunt
ALEX HALL recommends an exhaustive investigation of the means by which the Starmer faction assassinated the left
DAVID MORGAN recommends a refreshingly inspiring novel that features encounters with some tremendous women
GUSTAV HOLST is a composer who is one of the most obvious demonstrations of a composer known almost entirely for one work — The Planets Suite. Written 1914-17, the composition is a tour-de-force, which sadly is often overlooked because of the likes of Classic FM and others focusing purely on the barn-stomping movement Mars and Jupiter.
On September 21 we will celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth and for me a high point as he has had a wonderful influence on me throughout my life, particularly when I reflect on what it means to be an English composer.
I got my foundational musical education through brass banding. It was also colliery bands where I learnt a lot of my politics too — chatting to the old boys about their experiences during the ’84-85 strike and other union struggles.
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