www.holstmuseum.org.uk


Holst
Birthplace Trust
Newsletter

Editorial


This is the second of our new email newsletters.  The content of this email is essentially the same as that of the printed Newsletter, which we are about to post.  However, I have added some further items for which I didn't have space in the printed version.

If you would like to see a pdf of the printed newsletter, you can find it on our website here.

For the time being, we'll be issuing this email Newsletter at the same time as the printed one, but we may make it more frequent in the future.

Do please feel free to let me have your comments by email.

Richard Smith
Editor

Contents


The Holst Discovery Space
A New Guidebook for the Museum
Chairman's Message
Silent Gods and Sun Steeped Lands
Events
Opera Les Fauves: The Wandering Scholar
The Vision of Dame Christian
Millicent Lisle Woodforde
Membership
Welcome

The Holst Discovery Space


Have you ever wondered what Holst’s juvenilia sounds like?  When our new Holst Discovery Space opens to the public in late September, visitors will have the opportunity to hear his early compositions for the first time in over 130 years.  Holst’s early works, which he labelled ‘Early Horrors’ will be displayed as part of an interactive digital kiosk where you can ‘turn’ and ‘play’ the Museum’s collection of autograph scores.  Two of these compositions, both organ pieces, Allegretto Pastorale and Funeral March, were recently performed and recorded by John Wright at All Saints’ Church, Cheltenham, where Holst’s father, Adolph, was organist.  It is highly likely that Gustav composed these pieces on the very organ John used to play them over a century later.
 
As well as the digital kiosk, the room will have a large screen where visitors can watch clips from Tony Palmer’s film about Holst, In the Bleak Midwinter. There will also be displays of objects from the archive in pull-out drawers, housed in archive cabinets made especially for the 3,000 items housed.
 
The transformed space is distinctly different from the existing rooms in the house.  It has no period trappings – instead it is boldly 21st century in its feel and purpose.  It will offer a new way of discovering Holst, of delving deeper into the collections.  However, as it is a self-contained space, it will not intrude on the unique atmosphere of the Museum’s other rooms.

The Museum would like to thank the following who have made the project possible: The Heritage Lottery Fund, Gloucestershire Environmental Trust, The Summerfield Trust, The Holst Foundation, Comparo Ltd, Cheltenham Borough Council and Mr Bill Parker.

Laura Kinnear

...and a New Guidebook for the Museum

 
Funding from the Holst Discovery Space project has paid for the publication of a new guidebook to the Museum. The previous guidebook was published in the 1990s and has long since sold out. The prospect of a new guide offered the opportunity to do some new research and to think about what we wanted it to contain.  

The view that the guide should be much more focused on the house itself and give a flavour of Holst’s early years, as opposed to being a biography of Holst, was established early on. However what wasn’t anticipated was the wealth of new information we would discover about the house and its inhabitants. For example it has always been assumed that Gustav and Emil did not have a nursemaid when they were young. However, looking through archive material, we found out that two nursemaids were employed by the von Holst family. One of these nursemaids was called Alice Speachey.  One day Alice wheeled out baby Gustav in a new-fangled perambulator and was attacked by a drunk who had a severe antipathy to these pavement-hogging contraptions.  Fortunately neither Alice nor Gustav was hurt, although the drunk, a Mr Henry Swinhoe, was fined.  This is just one example of the many new stories to be discovered in the 24 pages of the guidebook.  The guide will be illustrated with numerous photographs by Bill Bagshaw, a member of Cheltenham Camera Club, who has voluntarily given hours of his time to take shots of the rooms and of staff and volunteers (including staff’s baby!) in costume.  The Museum is very grateful for his time and expertise. The new guidebook will be launched alongside the Holst Discovery Space at the end of September.

Laura Kinnear

Chairman's Message


It was encouraging to have a good attendance at our Annual General Meeting in July.  A strong and involved membership, in parallel with a resilient group of volunteers, is critical for the future of the Museum and an AGM is an important opportunity for the Trustees to get feedback and suggestions for improvement to complement those we are now getting from periodic Visitor surveys.

Volunteers are another key source of such information and, in this respect, we have been very pleased to be able to welcome some new young volunteers recently.  They bring fresh ideas, energy and challenge old perceptions.  They also bring a mastery of social networking of which I stand in awe.  But even I have now become accustomed to visit the Holst Museum twitter page regularly.  It has become a source of information that I would not otherwise have spotted.  One such example was notice of the performance of The Wandering Scholar which Alan Gibbs, at short notice, kindly offered to attend and review for us here.  Another  bonus from the same source is the photograph taken when two composers, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Márton Illés, happened to visit the Museum at the same time recently.    

Meanwhile more traditional means continue such as the current exhibition in the Museum.  This focusses on women in Holst’s family and workplace.  It is a happy coincidence that a radio play and a new book have each brought long delayed, but still welcome, recognition of the organisational and musical skills of Gustav’s daughter Imogen – or Imo as she was called.  This is one outcome from the centenary celebrations of the birth of Benjamin Britten with whom she worked very closely at Aldeburgh in the 1950s.  The fascinating play, called simply Imo and Ben, was heard on Radio 3 and revealed her productive, and periodically stormy, working relationship with Britten during the composing of his opera Gloriana to mark the 1953 Coronation.

The other tribute can be found in a new book by Ronald Blythe (of Akenfield renown) and called The Time by the Sea: Aldeburgh 1955-58.  Writing about his years there, Blythe relates insights about Imogen, for whom he worked at the Aldeburgh Festival.  Richard Morrison wrote in The Times that Imogen emerges as the unlikely heroine of the book, but this should not surprise us given the part she played in setting up the Museum.  There is a splendid opportunity to learn even more about this remarkable woman when Michael Short gives a talk about her many talents.  As listed in the Events, this talk will be given in the Museum on Friday 6th September.

Graham Lockwood

Silent Gods and Sun Steeped Lands


This evocative title was used for a book published to coincide with the Empire of India exhibition in London in 1895. There was a quote, in the front of the publication, by poet and author of A Passage to India, Walt Whitman: ‘Have you not thought, O Dreamer, that it may all be Maya, illusion’.  Whitman became an important influence on Holst, who later used this idea as the subject for a work for violin called Maya and for the opera Savitri.

The Holst Birthplace Museum is borrowing the title Silent Gods and Sun Steeped Lands for its new Hindu/Indian culture session for schools, which will be piloted with the help of Dunalley School in September this year.  We hope that it will evoke the same sense of mystery, magic and enquiry that led to Gustav Holst’s lifelong fascination with India and Sanskrit literature.  The session will be delivered through drama, music and art helping to address the lack of the creative arts on the curriculum after the introduction of the new National Curriculum in 2014.  The session will be available to schools from October 2013 and although piloted with Key Stages 1 and 2, can be tailored to suit any Key Stage.

The story of Savitri, related in Holst’s opera of the same name, will be the focus of the session’s drama activity.  It is also the subject of a dance/drama which is currently being rehearsed by the Hindu Cultural Association (HCA), Gloucester  in association with the Holst Birthplace Museum.  The first rehearsal took place in the middle of July with a great turn out of an enthusiastic cast working with a professional Theatre Director, Choreographer and Music Director. As well as using Holst’s music, there will be a mix of western and eastern influences producing an innovative accompanying soundscape.  The production takes place at Pates Grammar School at 3pm, 27th October and promises to be an exciting and vibrant spectacle.

Sara Salvidge

To book the school session, Silent Gods and Sun Steeped Lands, email:
learning@holstmuseum.org.uk
Watch out for further news of the HCA dance/drama, Savitri, on the Museum website.

Events


An autumn of variety, including a collaboration with the English Music Festival


One of our ways of spreading awareness of our Museum is to work with others on specific projects. Among those coming up is our association with the English Music Festival.

Em Marshall-Luck launched the annual English Music Festival (EMF) in 2006, with the aim of keeping the works of the major British composers in the repertoire as well as resurrecting forgotten delights to be found in the music of many lesser-known figures.  She achieves these aims through live performances at the annual festival based at Dorchester Abbey and through her own CD and publishing companies.  Holst has already benefited through new recordings of the Childhood of Christ and Five Pieces for Violin and Piano.

The latest EMF initiative is an Autumn festival of concerts in Gloucestershire.  We were pleased to accept the offered opportunity to include our own Holst Birthday Concert as an added attraction of the Festival programme, thereby increasing awareness of our  exciting event.  This concert will be at All Saints’ Church, Cheltenham, on the evening of Saturday 21st September, the exact anniversary of Gustav’s birth in 1874.  The Paulina Voices and St Paul’s Girls’ School Orchestra will perform in one half and the Flowers Brass Band in the other and each will include works by Holst, Vaughan Williams and others.  We hope to have a grand turnout for this wonderful evening.  The full programme for that Birthday Concert and other Festival concerts, together with details of booking, can be found on the events page of the Museum website.

Another event before then will be a fascinating talk by Michael Short entitled The Many Talents of   Imogen Holst, to be given on Friday 6th September in the Museum at 7.30 pm.  Tickets are available from the Museum and the Tourist Office:  Members £8, others £10.

On 18th October at 7.30 pm there will be a piano recital at the Museum, making use of Holst’s own piano.  John Wright, choirmaster of St Mary’s Charlton Kings, will play and discuss some of Holst’s early works. Tickets:  Members £8, others £10.

Looking forward to November, there will be a gourmet cheese and wine party on the 2nd with music for members and friends.  We are really grateful to Princess Nina Odescalchi for agreeing to host this event in her beautiful home at Lake House, Pittville Lawn.  Watch out for further announcements about tickets, and be ready to apply quickly because numbers will be limited.

Jane Woodley

Opéra Les Fauves: The Wandering Scholar


How enterprising of this new, young ensemble to choose Holst’s delightful  one-act comedy opera for their very first presentation!   Justin Fung, artistic and music director of Opéra les Fauves, announces that they ‘strive to explore and develop new practices’, no doubt as the Fauvistes did  in their use of colour.  So The Tale of the Wandering Scholar (Holst’s and Clifford Bax’s original title, which aptly suggests the tale within a tale) was updated from the 13thC in Helen Waddell’s story to the late 1950s.  Mercifully this did not result in the trendy distortion we have come to expect from operatic directors, but rather served to point out the continuing relevance of the plot, of sexual deceit and comeuppance.   Props on the platform of the performance space in the City University London were minimal: two chairs, a table, a ladder and a cooker, plus the necessary consumables.   Imagination supplied the rest, with excellent singing and acting from the four characters: Richard Moore (the farmer Louis), Aimẻe Toshney (his faithless wife Alison), David Menezes (the scholar-tramp Pierre) and Dionysios Kyropoulos (a graduate of the University, playing the lascivious priest Father Philippe).  The balance in the resonant acoustic was not perfect, but the actors managed to enunciate their words with admirable clarity.  The priest was tall rather than fat, but no matter, he was going to have his way with Alison, who had all the victuals ready for another of their customary encounters – pork, cake, wine.   When the poor scholar, having been uncharitably dismissed empty-handed, unexpect-edly returned with the farmer, his humility concealing unexpected cunning was perfectly conveyed as he unravelled the deception.   When the priest attempted to crawl out of hiding (actually the percussion department) unobserved, the farmer delivered the cake to his face in true custard-pie fashion, and sent his wife packing up the ladder as the final humiliation.   All of this was true to the spirit of the original and expertly directed by Tyrrell Jones, while accompaniments were competently performed  by the 12-piece orchestra. 

There followed three new song orchestrations:  by Michael (not Raymond) Head / Michael Shearer;  Brahms  / Alasdair Spratt; and Purcell / Danyal Dhondy.   The first was a sensitive scoring, the other two successful free recreations in modern idioms.   The last had a fortuitous Holst connection, in that King Arthur, from which it came, was the first of Holst’s pioneering Purcell revivals.

Alan Gibbs

The Vision of Dame Christian

 
Holst's masque, The Vision of Dame Christian, was performed in its entirety at St Paul's Girls' School on 1st July, exactly 100 years after its performance at the opening of the school's music wing - which includes the sound-proofed room where Holst was able to compose in peace. The Masque was written and premiered in 1909 in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the foundation of St Paul's School in West London.  It tells the story of Dame Christian, the mother of John Colet, Dean of St Paul's and founder of the School.  Her "vision" includes the foundation of the Girls' school nearly 400 years later, in 1904.  Holst joined St Paul's Girls' School as singing master in autumn 1905. His composition of the Masque music cemented his place in the school's history and his friendship with its first High Mistress, Frances Gray.  For the successful 1909 performance only three Paulina instrumentalists played with Holst's pupils from Morley College, but by 1913 Holst had formed and trained a school orchestra, and was able to claim to Edwin Evans that "all the performers were my own pupils (choir and orchestra of about 120) and the music is quite elaborate - not a bit the ordinary school girl stuff. Finally it contains my best tune - a solemn dance."  In the same letter Holst wrote that the Masque was "to be done every ten years and the music is not to be done outside the school".  This restriction, combined with the fact that the words and chorus parts were both privately printed, resulted in the music not being widely known. Despite frequent early performances, the most recent complete performance until 1st July was in about 1950.

Deliberately not a recreation of the 1913 event, the captivating and memorable performance on 1 July involved over 200 pupils, including those with speaking parts and five dancers. The school's carefully preserved collection of manuscripts and other artefacts relating to the first performances, displayed in the Singing Hall, provided a fascinating insight into Holst's attention to detail as he matched the performance to the capabilities of his pupils and the school environment.  Unlike the first performance, the large choir was on stage throughout. In contrast to the three woodwind players in 1909, there were over 10 times that number in the large orchestra.  In a reflection of the first High Mistress's scholarly and elegantly printed text for the 1909 performance, Dr Corissa Gould's programme notes explored the history of Holst's Masque in the life of the school. Frances Gray wrote in 1931 that gatherings of Paulinas "seldom separate without having sung through the Masque music". After the performance on 1st July, I watched a small group of Old Paulinas wending their way homewards whilst singing one of Holst's choruses in the street.

Philippa Tudor

Musicians from St Paul's Girls' School are performing at the Holst Birthday Concert on 21 September, including Holst's 8-part Ave Maria and his St Paul's Suite.

Millicent Lisle Woodforde


Philippa Tudor has also written an erudite and interesting article about Millicent Lisle Woodforde and her paintings of the Holsts' home at Barnes.  Her article is too long to reproduce here, but you can find it on the 'About Holst' page of the Museum website

Membership


If you are not already a subscribing Member of the Trust, please do consider joining and also tell your friends.  Not only would you have the satisfaction of giving financial and general support to the Museum, but you would also enjoy many other benefits.  The Museum leaflet contains an application form, which can also be downloaded from the Museum website.

Annual Membership rates are:

Single £15, Joint £20, Family £25, Overseas £25, Corporate £50, Benefactor £60, Joint Benefactor £100, Corporate Benefactor £300.
For further details, please contact the Membership Secretary, Catriona Smith

If you would like to become a Volunteer at the Museum, and thus a Volunteer Member, please contact the Curator, Laura Kinnear (tel 01242 524846)

Welcome

 
The Trustees would like to welcome Alex Bowcutt, Barbara Johnstone, Sarah Jones, Charles Waine and Sue Walker who have newly joined the Trust as Volunteers.
President: Martyn Brabbins
 
Patrons:
Lord Berkeley of Knighton CBE
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies
Dame Felicity Lott
Patricia Routledge CBE
Julian Lloyd Webber

Curator: Laura Kinnear  curator@holstmuseum.org.uk
Education & Events: Sara Salvidge learning@holstmuseum.org.uk
Newsletter editor: Richard Smith newsletter@holstmuseum.org.uk
Telephone: 01242 524846
Website: www.holstmuseum.org.uk

Supporters:
Cheltenham Borough Council
Willans LLP
 
Registered Charity No. 1078599
 

Copyright © 2013 Holst Birthplace Trust, All rights reserved.


unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp