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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]
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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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