Gustav Holst took up trombone as a boy hoping it would ease his asthma
At twelve, Gustav Holst started on the trombone because his father thought blowing a brass instrument might help his asthma. A painful nerve condition later ruled out a career at the piano, so the trombone paid his bills while he wrote music, long before The Planets made him famous.
Holst was born in Cheltenham on 21 September 1874, into a family with a professional musician in each of the three previous generations. The aristocratic-sounding von in his birth name was an invention: his grandfather Gustavus, a harp teacher who had come to England as a child in 1802, attached it to the surname to impress prospective pupils. Gustav's younger brother became Ernest Cossart, an actor who worked in the West End, New York and Hollywood.
His childhood was lonely. His mother died in February 1882, and a stepmother absorbed in theosophy paid the boys little attention. His eyesight was poor, yet nobody noticed he needed glasses, and the neuritis in his right arm made piano playing hard; he likened the limb to jelly charged with electricity. At seventeen he took his first job, as organist and choirmaster in the Gloucestershire village of Wyck Rissington.
He went on to study composition with Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music, and teaching became his other vocation. Ralph Vaughan Williams considered him a great teacher. He directed music at Morley College from 1907 to 1924, taught at St Paul's Girls' School from 1905 until he died, breaking ground in music education for women, and from 1916 ran a series of Whitsun festivals.
Fame arrived only with the international success of The Planets just after the First World War, and the shy composer did not enjoy it. His later music struck many listeners as austere, and most of it went unheard until recordings appeared in the 1980s, though younger composers such as Michael Tippett and Benjamin Britten learned from him. He died on 25 May 1934.
Source: Gustav Holst
