AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(Goos’-tav Holst) 1874–1934 English composer As young men, Holst and Vaughan Williams were musically and personally close, collecting folk songs together and playing through each other’s works. Unlike Vaughan Williams, Holst had no private income; he made his living first by playing the trombone, then as an inspiring teacher, at St Paul’s Girls’ School, London ...

• Instruments
• Percussion

playing runs and arpeggiated chords with great agility. The celesta is used extensively in Bartók’s music, in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and in ‘Mercury’ from The Planets (1914–16) by Gustav Holst (1874–1934). Introduction | Percussion Instruments Instruments | Mbira | Percussion ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1889–1983 English conductor Boult studied under Nikisch at the Leipzig Conservatory before joining the music staff at Covent Garden in 1914. In 1918 he conducted the first performance of Holst’s The Planets, soon becoming known as a champion of contemporary English music. He was musical director of the newly formed BBC Symphony Orchestra 1930–50 and of the London Philharmonic Orchestra ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical

Inferno (1974). Following collaborations with Steven Spielberg in the mid-1970s, Williams wrote music to Star Wars (1977). Stylistically, he adopts the romantic breadth of composers such as Gustav Holst (1874–1934) and Richard Strauss (1864–1949), but is able to make use of avant-garde techniques (for instance, for the velociraptor music in Jurassic Park, 1993) when they are called ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

Recording: ‘Mathis der Maler’ Symphony, Nobilissima Visione, Symphonia Serena, etc., San Francisco SO (cond) Herbert Blomstedt (Decca) Introduction | Modern Era | Classical Personalities | Gustav Holst | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Styles & Forms
• Film Music & Soundtracks
• Soundtracks & Theatre

Originating as a device to mask the sound of a whirring projector, film music has become so much more than ‘music from the movies’. Before the advent of video and DVD, the soundtrack was the most accessible way to return to a favourite movie. It has since evolved into a multi-million dollar industry and one of the most thriving ...

• Classical
• Late Romantic

and Carl Nielsen (1865–1931). The use of folk idioms and the search for national identity also transformed the music of such diverse composers as Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) and Gustav Holst (1874–1934) in Great Britain, and Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) and Béla Bartók (1881–1945) in Hungary, each of whom had a deep influence on the musical development of the generation ...

• Classical
• Modern Era

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–75). Elsewhere, composers de-humanized the voice and used it merely as a sonority, either as an ethereal effect, as in The Planets (1914–16) by Gustav Holst (1874–1934), or as semi-spoken chant, as in Les choéphores (‘The Libation Bearers’, 1915) by Darius Milhaud (1892–1974). Democracies in Music One effect of World War I and its accompanying ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

1710–78 English composer Arne was the son of an upholsterer in Covent Garden. As a Roman Catholic in a largely Protestant country, he had no access to the usual opportunities for advancement as a musician through a church appointment. In the 1730s, he became involved with putting on English-language opera performances in London, earning a reputation as a ...

• Personalities
• Prog Rock
• Psychedelic Rock
• Rock
• Seventies
• Seventies Rock

January–February Early Recording Sessions Working for the London arm of Elektra Records, Joe Boyd had already produced artists like The Incredible String Band. Peter Jenner and Andrew King had given him a rough Pink Floyd demo with a view to securing a deal. Although Elektra boss Jac Holzman did not go for the Floyd, Boyd, as musical director ...