Editing Gustav Holst (section)

===Royal College of Music===
In 1892 Holst wrote the music for an operetta in the style of [[Gilbert and Sullivan]], ''Lansdown Castle, or The Sorcerer of Tewkesbury''.<ref>Holst (1981), p. 17</ref> The piece was performed at Cheltenham Corn Exchange in February 1893; it was well received and its success encouraged him to persevere with composing.<ref>Short, pp. 17–18</ref> He applied for a scholarship at the [[Royal College of Music]] (RCM) in London, but the composition scholarship for that year was won by [[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor]].<ref name=h19698>Holst (1969), p. 8</ref> Holst was accepted as a non-scholarship student, and Adolph borrowed £100 to cover the first year's expenses.{{refn|According to Imogen Holst the most probable lender was Adolph's sister Nina.<ref name=h19698/>|group=n}} Holst left Cheltenham for London in May 1893. Money was tight, and partly from frugality and partly from his own inclination he became a vegetarian and a teetotaller.<ref name=h19698/> Two years later he was finally granted a scholarship, which slightly eased his financial difficulties, but he retained his austere personal regime.<ref>Holst (1969), pp. 13 and 15</ref>
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|caption1 = [[Charles Villiers Stanford]], Holst's composition professor
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|caption2 = Holst's lifelong friend [[Ralph Vaughan Williams]]}}
Holst's professors at the RCM were Frederick Sharpe (piano), William Stephenson Hoyte (organ), George Case (trombone),{{refn|group=n|Case was instrumental in having Beethoven's [[Three Equals for four trombones, WoO 30]] played at [[W. E. Gladstone]]'s funeral in May 1898.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Mansfield |first=Orlando A. |title=Some Anomalies in Orchestral Accompaniments to Church Music |journal=The Musical Quarterly |volume=2 |issue=2 |date=April 1916 |publisher=Oxford University Press |jstor=737953 |doi=10.1093/mq/II.2.199 |url=https://academic.oup.com/mq/search-results?page=1&q=Some%20Anomalies%20in%20Orchestral%20Accompaniments%20to%20Church%20Music%20%7Cjournal&fl_SiteID=5223&SearchSourceType=1&allJournals=1 |url-access=subscription |access-date=3 April 2021 |archive-date=20 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210620115638/https://academic.oup.com/mq/search-results?page=1&q=Some+Anomalies+in+Orchestral+Accompaniments+to+Church+Music+%7Cjournal&fl_SiteID=5223&SearchSourceType=1&allJournals=1 |url-status=live }}</ref>}} [[Georges Jacobi]] (instrumentation) and the director of the college, [[Hubert Parry]] (history). After preliminary lessons with [[W. S. Rockstro]] and [[Frederick Bridge]], Holst was granted his wish to study composition with [[Charles Villiers Stanford]].<ref>Mitchell, p. 9</ref>

To support himself during his studies Holst played the trombone professionally, at seaside resorts in the summer and in London theatres in the winter.<ref name=h198119>Holst (1981), p. 19</ref> His daughter and biographer, [[Imogen Holst]], records that from his fees as a player "he was able to afford the necessities of life: board and lodging, manuscript paper, and tickets for standing room in the gallery at Covent Garden Opera House on Wagner evenings".<ref name=h198119/> He secured an occasional engagement in symphony concerts, playing in 1897 under the baton of [[Richard Strauss]] at the [[Queen's Hall]].<ref name=grove>{{cite web|last=Matthews|first=Colin|title=Holst, Gustav|url=http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/13252|publisher=Grove Music Online|accessdate=22 March 2013|author-link=Colin Matthews|archive-date=31 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200531051939/https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013252|url-status=live}}{{subscription}}</ref>

Like many musicians of his generation, Holst came under [[Richard Wagner|Wagner]]'s spell. He had recoiled from the music of ''[[Götterdämmerung]]'' when he heard it at Covent Garden in 1892, but encouraged by his friend and fellow-student [[Fritz Hart]] he persevered and quickly became an ardent Wagnerite.<ref>Holst (1969), p. 11</ref> Wagner supplanted Sullivan as the main influence on his music,<ref>Holst (1969), pp. 23, 41; and Short, p. 41</ref> and for some time, as Imogen put it, "ill-assimilated wisps of ''[[Tristan und Isolde|Tristan]]'' inserted themselves on nearly every page of his own songs and overtures."<ref name=h198119/> Stanford admired some of Wagner's works, and had in his earlier years been influenced by him,<ref>Rodmell, p. 49</ref> but Holst's sub-Wagnerian compositions met with his disapprobation: "It won't do, me boy; it won't do".<ref name=h198119/> Holst respected Stanford, describing him to a fellow-pupil, [[Herbert Howells]], as "the one man who could get any one of us out of a technical mess",<ref>{{cite journal|last=Howells|first=Herbert|title=Charles Villiers Stanford (1852–1924). An Address at His Centenary| jstor= 766209|work=Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 79th Sess. (1952–1953)|pages=19–31}} {{subscription}}</ref> but he found that his fellow students, rather than the faculty members, had the greater influence on his development.<ref name=h198119/>

In 1895, shortly after celebrating his twenty-first birthday, Holst met [[Ralph Vaughan Williams]], who became a lifelong friend and had more influence on Holst's music than anybody else.<ref>Mitchell, p. 15</ref> Stanford emphasised the need for his students to be self-critical, but Holst and Vaughan Williams became one another's chief critics; each would play his latest composition to the other while still working on it. Vaughan Williams later observed, "What one really learns from an Academy or College is not so much from one's official teachers as from one's fellow-students&nbsp;... [we discussed] every subject under the sun from the lowest note of the double bassoon to the philosophy of ''[[Jude the Obscure]]''.<ref>Moore, p. 26</ref> In 1949 he wrote of their relationship, "Holst declared that his music was influenced by that of his friend: the converse is certainly true."<ref name=archive>{{cite web|last=Vaughan Williams|first=Ralph|title=Holst, Gustav Theodore (1874–1934)|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/olddnb/33963|publisher=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online edition|accessdate=22 March 2013|archive-date=24 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924162936/http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/olddnb/33963|url-status=live}} {{ODNBsub}}</ref>

The year 1895 was also the bicentenary of [[Henry Purcell]], which was marked by various performances including Stanford conducting ''[[Dido and Aeneas]]'' at the [[Lyceum Theatre, London|Lyceum Theatre]];<ref>{{cite book|last=de Val|first=Dorothy|title=In Search of Song: The Life and Times of Lucy Broadwood|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|series=Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain|date=2013|page=66|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=scuhAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA66|access-date=18 May 2016}}</ref> the work profoundly impressed Holst,<ref name=grove/> who over twenty years later confessed to a friend that his search for "the (or <u>a</u>) musical idiom of the English language" had been inspired "unconsciously" by "hearing the [[Recitative|recits]] in Purcell's ''Dido''".<ref name=GHolstWhit23>Holst, Gustav (1974), p. 23</ref>

Another early influence was [[William Morris]].<ref name=h196916>Holst (1969), p. 16</ref> In Vaughan Williams's words, "It was now that Holst discovered the feeling of unity with his fellow men which made him afterwards a great teacher. A sense of comradeship rather than political conviction led him, while still a student, to join the [[Socialist League (UK, 1885)|Socialist League]] which met at Kelmscott House in [[Hammersmith]]."<ref name=archive/> At [[Kelmscott House]], Morris's home, Holst attended lectures by his host and [[George Bernard Shaw|Bernard Shaw]]. His own socialism was moderate in character, but he enjoyed the club for its good company and his admiration of Morris as a man.<ref>Holst (1969), p. 17</ref> His ideals were influenced by Morris's but had a different emphasis. Morris had written, "I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few. I want all persons to be educated according to their capacity, not according to the amount of money which their parents happen to have".<ref>Holst (1981), p. 21</ref> Holst said, "'Aristocracy in art'—art is not for all but only for the chosen few—but the only way to find those few is to bring art to everyone—then the artists have a sort of masonic signal by which they recognise each other in the crowd."{{refn|Vaughan Williams recorded this in a letter dated 19 September 1937 to Imogen Holst, signing himself, as was his custom, "Uncle Ralph". In the same letter he wrote of Holst's view "That the artist is born again & starts afresh with every new work."<ref>Vaughan Williams, p. 252</ref>|group=n}} He was invited to conduct the Hammersmith Socialist Choir, teaching them [[madrigals]] by [[Thomas Morley]], choruses by Purcell, and works by [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]], Wagner and himself.<ref name=ih198123/> One of his choristers was (Emily) Isobel Harrison (1876–1969), a beautiful [[soprano]] two years his junior. He fell in love with her; she was at first unimpressed by him, but she came round and they were engaged, though with no immediate prospect of marriage given Holst's tiny income.<ref name=ih198123>Holst (1981), p. 23</ref>