This is a list of events occurring in the 1630s, ordered by year.

[edit] 1630

[edit] January–June

• February 22 – Native American Quadequine introduces popcorn to English colonists.
• March 3 – A fleet sent by the Dutch West India Company captures Recife from the Portuguese, establishing Dutch Brazil.
• March 22 – Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.
• March 29 – Great Migration: The ship Arbella and three other ships leave Southampton, England with 400 passengers headed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in America.
• June 6 – Swedish warships depart from Stockholm to Germany.
• June 14 – Passengers of the Arbella, including Anne Bradstreet, America's first poet of significance, finally set foot in the New World in Salem, MA

[edit] July–December

• July 6
  • The Success, last ship of the Winthrop Fleet, lands safely at Salem harbor, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
  • Thirty Years' War: Leading an army of 13.000, king Gustav Adolf of Sweden enter the Thirty Years' War on protestant side by making landfall at Peenemünde, Pomerania.
• July 9 – Thirty Years' War: Stettin is taken by Swedish forces.
• July 18 – War of Mantuan Succession: Mantua is sacked by an imperial army led by Count Johann von Aldringen.
• July 30 – John Winthrop helps in founding a church in Massachusetts which will later become known as First Church in Boston.
• August – Thirty Years' War: As a result of heavy pressure from the Prince-electors, Ferdinand II dismisses general Wallenstein from command of the imperial army.
• September 4 – Thirty Years' War: the Treaty of Stettin is signed by Sweden and Pomerania, forming a close alliance between them, as well as giving Sweden full military control over Pomerania.
• September 17 – The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded.
• September 24 – The first ship of de Sauce's emigrants arrive at Southampton Hundred on the James River in Virginia.
• October 13 – War of Mantuan Succession: the Peace of Regensburg is signed. Charles Gonzaga is confirmed as Duke of Mantua.
• November 10–November 11 – Day of Dupes: Marie de' Medici unsuccessfully attempts to oust Richelieu.

[edit] Date unknown

• Johann Heinrich Alsted's Encyclopaedia is published.
• The first account of the Childes Tomb story is published.
• Paramaribo, Suriname is first settled by the British.
• Puritan pamphleteer Dr. Alexander Leighton publishes Zion's Plea Against Prelacy: An Appeal to Parliament, an attack on Anglican bishops, in London. He is sentenced by Archbishop William Laud's High Commission Court to public whipping, branding, and having his ears cut off.
• First year of Deccan famine in India—which will kill some 2,000,000 in 3 years.
• Thirty Years' War: Swedish intervention starts.
• Fedorovych Uprising: Zaporozhian Cossacks rebel against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and occupy a large part of present day Ukraine. After a number of indecisive skirmishes with a Polish army sent to pacify the region, the Treaty of Pereiaslav is signed, ending the uprising.

[edit] 1631

[edit] January–June

• January 23 – Thirty Years' War: Sweden and France sign the Treaty of Bärwalde, a military alliance in which France provides funds for the Swedish army invading northern Germany.
• February 5 – Roger Williams emigrates to Boston.
• February 16 – Gustav Adolf Secondary School is founded in Tallinn, Estonia by Swedish king Gustav II Adolf.
• April 13 – Thirty Years' War: Gustav Adolf of Sweden defeats an imperial garrison at the city of Frankfurt an der Oder.
• May 10 – Thirty Years' War: After a two month siege, an Imperial army under the command of Tilly storms the German city of Magdeburg and brutally sacks it, massacring over 20,000 inhabitants. Shocked by the massacre, many protestant states in the Holy Roman Empire decide to ally with Gustav Adolf of Sweden and support his ongoing invasion.
• May 18 – In Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop takes the oath of office and becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts.
• May 30
  • La Gazette, the first French newspaper, was founded.
  • Thirty Years' War: Bavaria and France sign the Treaty of Fontainebleau, forming a secret alliance. The secret alliance does not last long, however.
• June 19 – War of Mantuan Succession: The Treaty of Cherasco is signed, ending the War of Mantuan Succession.
• June 20 – Algerian pirates sack Baltimore, County Cork in Ireland.

[edit] July–December

• July 16 – The city of Würzburg is taken by Gustav Adolf of Sweden, putting an end to the Würzburg witch trials, but not before an estimated 900 people from the city and its environs had been burned at the stake for witchcraft.
• July 22 – Thirty Years' War: Tilly defeats Gustav Adolf of Sweden at the Battle of Werben, but not decisively.
• End of August – Thirty Years' War: Running out of supply, Tilly is forced to send his army into Electoral Saxony in order to secure supplies, as well as to force a reaction from John George, Elector of Saxony and Gustav Adolf of Sweden.
• September 11 – Thirty Years' War: As a result of Tilly's invasion, John George, Elector of Saxony, who had until now stayed neutral, allies with Gustav Adolf of Sweden in order to drive the Imperial army out of Saxony.
• September 12 – Eighty Years' War: A Spanish fleet under the command of admiral Antonio de Oquendo defeats a Dutch fleet off the coast of Brazil in the Battle of Albrolhos.
• September 12 and 13 – Eighty Years' War: A Spanish fleet carrying an invasion force is intercepted and almost completely destroyed by a Dutch fleet in the Battle of the Slaak.
• September 17 – Thirty Years' War: In the Battle of Breitenfeld, Tilly's imperial army is decisively defeated by Gustav II Adolf of Sweden, shattering the imperial army of the Holy Roman Empire and marking the first significant victory for the Protestants in the war.
• October 10 – Thirty Years' War: A Saxon army takes over Prague.
• December 23 – Thirty Years' War: Gustav Adolph of Sweden takes the city of Mainz without any resistance.

[edit] Date unknown

• Moses Amyraut's Traite des Religions is published.
• The bell "Emmanuel" in Notre Dame de Paris is recast.
• The Taj Mahal's construction is started (it is finished in 1653).
• Mount Vesuvius erupts in Pompeii.
• First English settlement by William Claiborne within the State of Maryland, U.S.A.

[edit] 1632

[edit] January–June

• February 22 – Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is published.
• March 29 – The Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, returning Quebec to French control after the English had seized it in 1629.
• March – Thirty Years' War – Gustav Adolf of Sweden invades Bavaria with his army.
• April 15 – Thirty Years' War – Gustavus Adolphus defeats Tilly for the second time within a year at the Battle of Rain. Tilly is severely wounded during the battle.
• April 30 – Thirty Years' War – Johan Tzerclaes, Count of Tilly and commander of the Catholic League armies, dies from wounds sustained at the battle of Rain.
• May – Thirty Years' War – Munich, capital of Bavaria, is captured by the Swedish army.
• June 15 – Sir Francis Windebank is made chief Secretary of State in England.
• June 20 – Charles I of England issues a charter for the colony of Maryland (named in honor of Henrietta Maria), under the control of Lord Baltimore.
• June 25 – Susenyos' son, Emperor Fasilides, declares the state religion of Ethiopia to again be Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, confiscates the lands of the Jesuit missionaries, relegating them to Fremona.
• June – Eighty Years' War – Leading a Dutch army, Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange captures in short succession the cities of Venlo, Roermond and Sittard, before besieging the city of Maastricht.

[edit] July–December

• July 23 – Three hundred colonists for New France depart Dieppe.
• August 22 – Eighty Years' War – A Dutch army led by Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, captures the city of Maastricht after a two-month siege.
• September 1 – A rebellion against French king Louis XIII is crushed at the Battle of Castelnaudary. The leader of the rebellion, Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIII, surrenders.
• September 9 – Thirty Years' War – Besieged by Wallenstein at Nuremberg, Swedish king Gustav Adolph attempts to break the siege, but is defeated in the Battle of the Alte Veste.
• October 15 – Official opening of the University of Tartu in Swedish Livonia.
• October 30 – Henry II, Duke of Montmorency, is executed for his participation in the rebellion of Gaston, Duke of Orléans against the French king Louis XIII.
• November 8 – Wladyslaw IV Waza is elected king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth after Sigismund III Vasa's death.
• November 16
  • Thirty Years' War – Battle of Lützen – Swedish king Gustav II Adolf leads an assault on Wallenstein's army, but is killed early in the battle. Despite the king's death, the Swedish commanders manage to rally the army and eventually defeat Wallenstein's army. As a result, Wallenstein withdraws from Saxony.
  • Following the death of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, he is succeeded by his 6 year old daughter Christina while five regents, headed by Axel Oxenstierna, govern the country since she is underage.
• November 17 – Thirty Years' War – Gottfried zu Pappenheim, Field Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, dies from wounds sustained in the Battle of Lützen.

[edit] Date unknown

• Fasilides succeeds his father Susenyos as Emperor of Ethiopia.
• Antigua and Barbuda is first colonized by England.
• The Portuguese driven out of Bengal.
• Yakutsk, Russia is founded.
• King Władysław IV Vasa of Poland forbids antisemitic books and printings.

[edit] 1633

[edit] January–June

• February 13 – Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
• March 1 – Samuel de Champlain reclaims his role as commander of New France on behalf of Cardinal Richelieu.
• April 12 – Galileo Galilei convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic church ^[1]
• June 22 – The Roman Catholic church forces Galileo Galilei to recant his heliocentric view of the solar system: Eppur si muove (Italian) (Which, in fact, he did not say).

[edit] July–December

• October 22 – A Ming dynasty fleet under Zheng Zhilong beat a Dutch East India Company fleet at the island of Quemoy.

[edit] Date unknown

• The Jews of Poznań are granted the privilege of forbidding Christians to enter into their city quarter.
• In Ethiopia, the Emperor Fasilides expels the Jesuit missionaries.
• Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu of Japan outlaws Christianity and begins a policy of extreme isolationism.
• Mission San Luis de Apalachee is built in the New World by two Spanish friars.
• A professorship in Arabic studies is founded at Cambridge University.

[edit] 1634

[edit] January–June

• February 24–February 25—Rebellious soldiers kill Albrecht von Wallenstein.
• March 1 – Battle of Smolensk: King Ladislaus IV of Poland defeats the Russian army.
• March 25 – The first settlers arrive in St. Mary's City, Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore), the fourth permanent settlement in British North America.

[edit] July–December

• July 4 – The city of Trois-Rivières is founded in New France (later the Canadian province of Quebec).
• August 18 – Urbain Grandier, a priest accused of sorcery, is burned alive in Loudun, France.
• September 5–September 6 – The Battle of Nördlingen results in a Catholic victory.
• October 11–October 12 – The Burchardi flood (also known as the second Grote Mandrenke) strikes the North Sea coast of Germany and Denmark, causing 8,000–12,000 deaths.
• November 11 – The Irish House of Commons passes an Act for the Punishment of the Vice of Buggery

[edit] Date unknown

• Moses Amyraut's Traite de la predestination is published.
• Curaçao is captured by the Dutch.
• The Treaty of Polianovska is defined.
• The first meeting of the Académie française occurs.
• Jean Nicolet becomes the first European to set foot in Wisconsin. He is in search of a water-route to the Pacific when he lands at Green Bay, most likely in August 1634.
• Covent Garden Market opens in London.
• The German Brewery Paulaner is established.
• The English establish a settlement at Cochin (now Kochi) on the Malabar Coast.
• The first decennial performance of the Oberammergau Passion Plays is held.
• In England, Oxford University Press receives its charter and becomes the second of the privileged presses.
• In Maryland, the Jesuits Andrew White, John Altham Gravenor, and Thomas Gervase arrived with Lord Leonard Calvert on March 25, 1634, and in that year established an institution of higher learning at St. Mary's which later became known as Georgetown University, North America's oldest university.
• Suspecting that Patriarch Afonso Mendes played a part in the Portuguese assault on Mombasa, Emperor Fasilides expels him and several Jesuit missionaries from Ethiopia.

[edit] 1635

[edit] January–June

• February 22 – The Académie française in Paris is formally constituted as the national academy for the preservation of the French language.^[2]
• April 13 – Maronite warlord Fah-al-Din II is executed in Constantinople.
• May – France declares war on Spain.
• May 30 – Thirty Years' War – The Peace of Prague is signed.

[edit] July–December

• August 25 – The Great Colonial Hurricane strikes Narragansett Bay as a possible Category 3 hurricane, killing over 46 people.
• September 12 – The Treaty of Sztumska Wieś is signed between Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• October 9 – Rhode Island founder Roger Williams is banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident, after speaking out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land.
• November 15 – Thomas Parr, dead at the alleged age of 152, is buried in Westminster Abbey.

[edit] Date unknown

• Guadeloupe and Martinique are colonized by France.
• Dominica is claimed by France.
• The Ottomans are expelled from Yemen.
• Nagyszombat University (predecessor of Budapest University) is established.
• Boston Latin School, the oldest school in the United States of America, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Japan forbids merchants to travel abroad under penalty of death.
• A Japanese imperial memorandum decrees: "Hereafter entry by the Portuguese galeota is forbidden. If they insist on coming, the ships must be destroyed and anyone aboard those ships must be beheaded."
• Willem and Joan Blaeu publish the first edition of their Atlas Novus in Amsterdam.

[edit] 1636

[edit] January–June

• February 24 – King Christian of Denmark gives an order that all beggars that are able to work must be sent to Brinholmen, to build ships or to work as galley rowers.
• March 26 – Utrecht University is founded in the Netherlands.

[edit] July–December

• August 15
  • The Spanish besiege Corbie, France.
  • The covenant of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts is first signed.
• September 8 – A vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony establishes New College (Harvard University) as the first college founded in North America.
• December 13 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

[edit] Date unknown

• Emperor Fasilides of Ethiopia founds the city of Gondar, which becomes the capital of Ethiopia for the next two centuries.
• The first American ancestor of John Adams, Henry Adams, emigrates to Massachusetts.
• Pierre Corneille's play, Le Cid, is first performed.
• Manchus occupy the Liaoning region in north China, select Shenyang (Mukden) as their capital, and proclaim the new Qing Dynasty ("pure").
• The Shogun forbids Japanese to travel abroad and those abroad from returning home.
• In the American colonies, Roger Williams (theologian) founds Rhode Island.
• Thirty Years' War: French intervention starts.
• The first synagogue of the New World, Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue, is founded in Recife by the Dutch.

[edit] 1637

[edit] January–June

• February 3 – Tulip mania collapses in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands).
• February 15 – Ferdinand III becomes the Holy Roman Emperor.
• April 10 – Plymouth Colony grants the "tenn menn of Saugust" a new settlement on Cape Cod, later named Sandwich, Massachusetts.
• May 26 – Pequot War: A band of English settlers under Captain John Mason, and their Narragansett and Mohegan allies, set fire to a fortified Pequot village near the Mystic River in what is later known as the Mystic massacre. Between 400 to 700 people, mostly women and children and old men, are killed.
• May – Chinese encyclopedist, Song Yingxing, publishes his Tiangong Kaiwu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature), considered one of the most valuable encyclopedias of classical China.
• June 27 – The first English venture to China is undertaken by Admiral Weddell, who sails into port in Macau and Canton during the late Ming Dynasty. The voyages are for trade, which is dominated there by the Portuguese (then combined with the power of Spain).

[edit] July–December

• 23 July - After a court battle, King Charles I handed over title to the North American colony of Massachusetts to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, one of the founders of Plymouth Council for New England.
• October 13 – The launching ceremony is held for HMS Sovereign of the Seas, the gilded warship of the British Royal Navy.
• December 17 – The Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan.

[edit] Date unknown

• Pierre de Fermat makes a notation, in a document margin, claiming to have proof of what would become known as Fermat's last theorem.
• France places a few missionaries in the Côte d'Ivoire, a country it will rule more than 200 years later.
• The Kingdom of England wages war against the Mashantucket Pequots.
• The first opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, opens in Venice.
• René Descartes writes his Discours de la Méthode.
• Elizabeth Poole becomes the first woman to have founded a town (Taunton, Massachusetts) in the Americas.
• The Blessed Virgin is proclaimed Queen of Genoa.
• Second Manchu invasion of Korea: The Joseon court reluctantly submits to the Manchu's demands of vassalhood while continuing to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Ming Dynasty.
• Six European ships dock at a port in China, bringing 38,421 pairs of eyeglasses to China during the late Ming Dynasty, the first recorded European-made eyeglasses to enter China. Now the Daoist unconcern with sight will change, along with their favorable attitude towards lack of intricate detail in painting (although those with good eyesight often favor intricate details in their painting). Refer to page 57 of Timothy Brook's book The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. However, the historian Kaiming Chiu argues in his The Introduction of Spectacles Into China that spectacles were introduced into China as far back as the late 13th century.
• 30,000 peasants in the heavily Catholic area of northern Kyūshū revolt.

[edit] 1638

[edit] January–June

• February 28 – The Scottish National Covenant is signed in Edinburgh.
• March 3 – a mercenary army under Bernard de Saxe-Weimar fighting for France defeats imperial forces at the Battle of Rheinfelden.
• March 5 – Thirty Years' War – The Treaty of Hamburg is signed by France and Sweden.
• March 29 – The Swedish arrive on the ships Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip to America, to establish the first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.
• March – Anne Hutchinson is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy and goes to Rhode Island.
• April 3 – John Wheelwright is banished from Boston and founds Exeter New Hampshire.
• April 15 – Shogunate forces defeat the last remnants of the Shimabara Rebellion in the fortress of Hara.
• May 23 – signing of the Kandyan Treaty between the Singhala King Rajasimha II and the Dutch to rid Ceylon of the Portuguese.
• June 20 – Spanish troops under Ferdinand of Austria defeat a much larger Dutch force near Antwerp at the Battle of Kallo during the Eighty Years War.
• June 27 – Patriarch Cyril of Constantinople is deposed for high treason and strangled and thrown into the sea by Janissaries on Ottoman Sultan Murad IV's command.

[edit] July–December

• September 21 – The Treaty of Hartford is signed, ending the Pequot War between British American colonists and the Pequot.
• September– John Spofford originator and forefather of the decedents of Spofford family arrives in Boston harbor by way of the ship "john of london" and is one of the first people to establish Rowely, Essex County, Massachusetts.
• October 21 – The Great Thunderstorm breaks out in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, England.
• November – The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland is summoned to Glasgow by King Charles I of England.
• December 18 – Mazarin becomes first adviser to French potentate Richelieu on the death of Leclerc du Tremblay.
• December 21 – The full moon is in total eclipse from 1:12 to 2:47 UT and the solstice occurs later in the day at 16:05 UT.

[edit] Date unknown

• Covenanters meet at Muchalls Castle to compose responses to the Bishops of Aberdeen.
• The Dutch settle in Ceylon.
• Pedro Teixeira makes the first ascent of the Amazon River, from its mouth to Quito, Ecuador. The same trip had been made in the opposite direction in 1541.
• Dutch merchant Willem Kieft is appointed Director of New Amsterdam by the Dutch West India Company.
• The Netherlands colonizes Mauritius.
• Shipwrecked sailors from England found the first known European settlement in Belize.
• The Finnish postal service, Suomen Posti, is founded.
• New Haven, the first planned city in America, is founded.
• The Beijing Gazette makes an official switch in its production process of newspapers, from woodblock printing to movable type printing; private newspapers in Ming Dynasty China were first mentioned in 1582.
• Sultan Murad IV captures Baghdad.
• Shah Jahan transfers the capital of the Moghul Empire from Agra to Delhi.
• Buccaneer Peter Wallace called "Ballis" by the Spanish, settles near and perhaps gives his name to the Belize River.

[edit] 1639

[edit] January–June

• January 14 – Connecticut's first constitution, the Fundamental Orders, is adopted.
• March 3 – The early settlement of Taunton, Massachusetts is incorporated as a town.
• March 13 – Harvard University is named for clergyman John Harvard.
• May – The first of the Bishops' Wars breaks out between Charles I and Scotland. Charles arrives with his army at Berwick-on-Tweed.
• April 14 – Swedish forces under Johan Baner inflict a crushing defeat on the Imperial army at the Battle of Chemnitz. This prolongs the Thirty Year's War and allows the Swedes to occupy Pirna and advance into Bohemia.
• June – The first battle of the Bishops' Wars is fought by Earl Marischal and the Marquess of Montrose, when they lead a Covenanter army of 9,000 men past Muchalls Castle over the Causey Mounth to fight at the Bridge of Dee.
• June 18 – The Treaty of Berwick is signed by Charles I and the Scots.

[edit] July–December

• August 22 – The founding day of Madras.
• October 31 – Naval Battle of the Downs: A Republic of the United Provinces fleet decisively defeats a Spanish fleet in English waters.
• November 24 – Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus.

[edit] Date unknown

• Fort St George, the first settlement of British India, is founded at Madras. ^[3]
• The Casiquiare canal, a river forming a natural canal between the Amazon River and Orinoco River basins, is first encountered by Europeans.
• The Barbados House of Assembly meets for the first time.
• The first printing press in North America is started in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• Russian Cossacks advance over the Urals to the Pacific, to Okhotsk.
• Montreal is first settled.
• Sakoku (closed country policy) starts in Japan (approximate date).
• Jules Mazarin enters the service of Richelieu.
• Treaty of Zuhab between Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and Safavid Persia. Modern Turkey-Iran and Iraq-Iran border lines.

Significant people[link]

Births[link]

Deaths[link]

• November 6, 1632 – King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (in the Battle of Lützen) (b. 1594)

References[link]

Gustav Holst, circa 1921 (photograph by Herbert Lambert)

Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst, 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets.^[1]

His early works show the influence of Grieg, Wagner,^[2] Richard Strauss and fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams,^[3] and later, through Vaughan Williams, the music of Ravel.^[4] The combined influence of Ravel, Hindu spiritualism and English folk tunes^[4] enabled Holst to free himself of the influence of Wagner and Strauss and to forge his own style. Holst's music is well known for unconventional use of metre and haunting melodies.

Holst composed almost 200 works, including operas, ballets, choral hymns and songs. An enthusiastic educator, Holst became music master at St Paul's Girls' School in 1905 and director of music at Morley College in 1907, continuing in both posts until retirement.^[4] He also taught singing at Wycombe Abbey School from 1912 until 1917.

He was the brother of Hollywood actor Ernest Cossart and father of the composer and conductor Imogen Holst, who wrote a biography of him in 1938.^[3]

Early life[link]

Statue of Gustav Holst at his birthplace, Cheltenham, England.

Holst was born on 21 September 1874, at 4 Pittville Terrace (named today Clarence Road)^[5] Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.^[1][6] The house has been opened as a museum devoted to Holst's life and times since 1974, devoted partly to him and partly to illustrating local domestic life of the mid-19th century.^[7]

Holst's great-grandfather, Matthias von Holst, was of Nordic origin, and came to England in 1802 from Riga.^[5] His son Gustavus moved to England with his parents as a child; he became a composer of salon-style harp music and a notable harp teacher.^[6] Holst's father, Adolph von Holst, was organist and choirmaster at All Saints' Church in Pittville.^[1] He also gave both piano lessons and recitals, most regularly at the Assembly Rooms.^[8] Holst's mother, Clara von Holst, who died in 1882, was a singer who bore two sons, Gustav and Emil Gottfried (who later became Ernest Cossart, a film actor in Hollywood).^[9] Following his wife's death, Adolph von Holst moved with his sons to 1 Vittoria Walk, Cheltenham, and eventually married Mary Thorley Stone in 1885: she gave birth to two further sons, Matthias Ralph and Evelyn Thorley.^[10]

Holst was christened Gustavus Theodore von Holst, after his grandfather and his great-uncle Theodor, a painter.^[11] He was a frail child with neuritis in his arm which plagued him for the rest of his life. His early recollections were musical; he was taught to play the piano and violin, and began composing when he was about twelve.^[6] He also started to play the trombone when his father thought this might improve his son's asthma.^[12] He was educated at Cheltenham Grammar School for Boys. He began composition at school, writing piano pieces, organ voluntaries, songs, anthems and a Symphony in C minor (from 1892). He was also organist and choir master at Wyck Rissington in the Cotswolds.^[13]

He attended the Royal College of Music^[1] on a scholarship, where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford and where in 1895^[6] he met fellow student Ralph Vaughan Williams,^[1] who became a lifelong friend. Vaughan Williams's own music was in general quite different from Holst’s,^[6] but he praised Holst's work abundantly and the two men developed a shared interest in exploring and maintaining the English vocal and choral tradition as found primarily in folk song, madrigals and church music.^[4] Holst and Vaughan Williams were able to criticise each other's compositions as they were being written. They never lost this degree of mutual trust.

While at the Royal College of Music, Holst fell in love with the music of Wagner, which he was able to hear at Covent Garden. He also came under the influence of William Morris, joining the Hammersmith Socialist Society and attending lectures by Morris and George Bernard Shaw (with whom he temporarily shared a passion for vegetarianism ). Holst remained a socialist all his life. He was also invited to conduct the Hammersmith Socialist Choir, teaching them Madrigals by Thomas Morley, choruses by Purcell, extracts from Wagner as well as works by Mozart and himself.^[14]

Career[link]

First steps[link]

Holst had hoped to build his career partly as a pianist, but stricken from adolescence with a nerve condition that increasingly affected the movement of his right hand, he eventually gave up the piano for the trombone.^[4] He was good enough to earn employment with the Carl Rosa Opera Company and the Scottish Orchestra (forerunner of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) although his salary was only just enough to live on.^[15]

Royal College of Music (1894 site), where Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams studied in 1895.

He also played in a popular orchestra called the "White Viennese Band", conducted by Stanislas Wurm. The music was cheap and repetitive and not to Holst's liking, and he referred to this kind of work as "worming" (a pun on Wurm's name, which means "worm" in German) and regarded it as "criminal". His need to "worm" came to an end as his compositions became more successful, and his income was given stability by his teaching posts.^[1] With his finances secure, Holst married Emily Isobel Harrison, a fair-headed soprano, at Fulham Register Office on 22 June 1901, their union enduring until his death in 1934. Emily Isobel bore him a daughter, Imogen, on 12 April 1907; to be their only child.^[16]

The poetry of Walt Whitman also had a profound effect on Holst, as it did with many of his contemporaries, and he set Whitman's words in "Dirge for Two Veterans" and The Mystic Trumpeter (1904). He also set poetry by Thomas Hardy^[6] and Robert Bridges. Holst also wrote an orchestral Walt Whitman Overture in 1899,^[17] which was given a world premiere recording by the Munich Symphony Orchestra, as well as a recording by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.^[18]

During these years Holst also became interested in Hindu mysticism and spirituality,^[4] and this interest led to the composition of several works set to translations of Sanskrit texts, including: Sita (1899–1906), a three-act opera based on an episode in the Ramayana; Sāvitri (1908),^[4] a chamber opera based on a tale from the Mahabharata; 4 groups of Hymns from the Rig Veda (1908–14); and two texts originally by Kalidasa: Two Eastern Pictures (1909–10) and The Cloud Messenger (1913). The texts of these last three works were translated by Holst himself.^[19] To make these translations from Sanskrit to English, Holst enrolled at University College London (UCL) to study the language as a 'non-matriculated' student. On 14 January 1909 he paid 5 guineas for Sanskrit classes during the spring and summer terms of that year. The UCL records also show that during this time he moved from 23 Grena Road in Richmond, to 10 The Terrace in Barnes. On 19 October 1909 he re-enrolled at UCL for the autumn term and paid 3 guineas "special fee" for his Sanskrit classes of "2 hours a week". The records end at this point, and so it seems he only spent one year as a student at UCL.^[20]

Teaching[link]

In 1904 Holst took his first teaching job as music master at James Allen's Girls' School in West Dulwich, South London.^[21]

In 1905, Holst was appointed Director of Music at St Paul's Girls' School^[4] in Hammersmith, London. In 1907, Holst also became director of music at Morley College.^[4] These were the most important of his teaching posts, and he retained both until the end of his life.^[4]

During the first two decades of the 20th century, musical society as a whole (and Holst's friend Vaughan Williams in particular) became interested in old English folksongs, madrigal singers,^[4] and Tudor composers. Holst shared in his friend’s admiration for the simplicity and economy of these melodies, and their use in his compositions is one of his music’s most recognisable features.

Holst was an avid rambler. He walked extensively in Italy, France and England. He also travelled outside the bounds of Europe, heading to French-controlled Algeria in 1908^[22] on doctor's orders as a treatment for asthma and the depression that crippled him after his submission failed to win the Ricordi Prize, a coveted award for composition. His travels in Arab and Berber lands, including an extensive cycling tour of the Algerian Sahara, inspired the suite Beni Mora, written upon his return.

The house in Barnes where Holst lived between 1908 and 1913. A Blue plaque signifying historical significance is fixed to the front of the building.

After the lukewarm reception of his choral work The Cloud Messenger in 1912, Holst was again off travelling, financing a trip to Spain with fellow composers Balfour Gardiner and brothers Clifford and Arnold Bax with funds from an anonymous donation. Despite being shy, Holst was fascinated by people and society, and had always believed that the best way to learn about a city was to get lost in it. In Girona, Catalonia, he often disappeared, only to be found hours later by his friends having abstract debates with local musicians. It was in Spain that Clifford Bax introduced Holst to astrology, a hobby that was to inspire the later Planets suite. He read astrological fortunes until his death, and called his interest in the stars his "pet vice".

Shortly after his return in 1913, St Paul's Girls School opened a new music wing, and Holst composed the still popular St Paul's Suite for the occasion.^[1] In 1913, Stravinsky premiered The Rite of Spring, sparking riots in Paris and caustic criticism in London. A year later, Holst first heard Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, an "ultra-modern" set of five movements employing "extreme chromaticism" (the consistent use of all 12 musical notes). Although he had earlier lampooned the stranger aspects of modern music, the new music of Stravinsky^[4] and Schoenberg influenced his work on The Planets.

Holst's compositions include works for wind band, and have become standards in the repertoire. His most famous are the First Suite in E-flat for Military Band of 1909 and the Second Suite in F for Military Band of 1911 (see also Hammersmith, below). He also wrote the "Moorside Suite" for brass band in 1928, the first recognised 'classical' composer to treat the medium seriously.^[23]

Holst and wife Isobel bought a cottage in Thaxted, Essex and, surrounded by medieval buildings and ample rambling opportunities, he started work on the suite that became his best known work, the orchestral suite The Planets. Holst himself adapted the theme from "Jupiter" as a hymn tune under the name of "Thaxted", specifically for the words "I Vow to Thee My Country". (According to the documentary by Tony Palmer In the Bleak Midwinter, Holst hated this association because the text was the opposite of what he believed. This is a little surprising, though, since he had made the adaptation himself in 1921.)^[24] His daughter Imogen later recalled of "I Vow to Thee" that "At the time when he was asked to set these words to music, Holst was so over-worked and over-weary that he felt relieved to discover they 'fitted' the tune from Jupiter".^[25]

While living in Thaxted, Holst became friendly with Rev. Conrad Noel, the famous 'Red Vicar', who supported the Independent Labour Party and espoused many unpopular causes. Holst became an occasional organist and choir master at Thaxted Parish Church and began an annual music festival at Whitsuntide in 1916, at which students from Morley College and St Paul's School performed. His best-known partsong, 'This Have I Done For My True Love', was dedicated to Noel and often performed with dancing during religious ceremonies at Thaxted. This was controversial, as the Church of England still retained much of the Puritan ethic in its services. (The singing of non-biblical texts had been allowed only as recently as 1820, and religious dancing harked back to pre-Reformation times.) As late as 1951 at the Leith Hill Festival, singers from the Anglican tradition objected to the words of Holst's partsong, which mention dance and religion together. Vaughan Williams, who was conducting, advised the objectors to vocalise and leave the words to those singers who did not share the inhibition.^[26] Controversy surrounded Holst's friendship with Noel, whose opinions grew progressively uncompromising, leading to his displaying the Red Flag and that of Sinn Fein in the church. Holst's view was that Noel's philosophy was a "gospel of comic hate",^[27] but he ceased to hold the music festival at Thaxted after three seasons, moving it to Dulwich.

Other tunes that also became attached to hymns were Cranham which is the usual tune to Christina Rossetti's poem In the Bleak Midwinter and Sheen which is attached to a versification of the recessional From glory to glory advancing from the Orthodox Christian Liturgy of Saint James.

World War I and after[link]

At the onset of World War I, Holst tried to enlist but was rejected because of his bad eyes, bad lungs and bad digestion. He dropped the "von" from his name in 1916 in response to anti-German sentiment, making it official by deed poll in 1918.^{[1][4][6][28]}

His new music, however, benefited from the growing demand for new English music. This was partly in response to an embargo on contemporary German music that saw very few performances of Richard Strauss and Max Reger throughout the war (although older generations of German composers remained as popular as ever, culminating in a run of Die Walküre, conducted by Thomas Beecham, in 1918).^[29] Towards the end of the war he was offered a post within the YMCA’s educational work programme as musical director and he set off for Salonica (present day Thessaloniki, Greece) and Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1918. While he was teaching music to troops eager to escape the drudgery of army life, The Planets was being performed to audiences back home. Shortly after his return after the war’s end, Holst composed Ode to Death, based upon a poem by Walt Whitman.

During the years 1920–1923, Holst's popularity grew through the success of The Planets and The Hymn of Jesus (1917)^[1] (based on the Apocryphal gospels), and the publication of a new opera, The Perfect Fool (a satire of a work by Wagner). Holst became something of "an anomaly, a famous English composer", and was busy with conducting, lecturing and teaching obligations. He hated publicity; he often refused to answer questions posed by the press and when asked for his autograph, handed out prepared cards that read, "I do not hand out my autograph". Always frail, after a collapse in 1923 he retired from all teaching (other than at St Paul's School, where he would remain until his death)^[30] to devote the remaining eleven years of his life to composition.^[1]

Later life[link]

Holst's 'retirement' was immediately productive, with the First Choral Symphony to words by Keats (a Second Choral Symphony to words by George Meredith exists only in fragments). A short Shakespearian opera, At the Boar's Head, followed quickly, although neither had the immediate popular appeal of A Moorside Suite for brass band of 1928.^[31]

Holst took advantage of new technology to publicise his work through sound recordings and the BBC’s wireless broadcasts. He began to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra for the Columbia company in 1922, using the acoustic process; his recordings of the period include Beni Mora, the Marching Song and (remarkably) the complete Planets. Although, as his daughter Imogen noted, he couldn't quite achieve the gradual fade-out of women's voices and orchestra he had written (owing to the limitations of early recording), it was a landmark recording of the work. Holst conducted it again, with the same orchestra and for the same company, in an electrical recording of 1926. All performances have been issued on LP and CD format.

In 1927 he was commissioned by the New York Symphony Orchestra to write a symphony. Instead, he wrote an orchestral piece based on Thomas Hardy's Wessex, a work that became Egdon Heath and which was first performed a month after Hardy’s death, in his memory. By this time, Holst was going out of fashion, and the piece was poorly reviewed (although this may have as much to do with the austere nature of the work). However, Holst is said to have considered the short, subdued but powerful tone poem his "best work".^[32] The piece has been much better received in recent years, with several recordings available. Holst did complete a scherzo for the symphony before his death; this music has been recorded.

Memorial in Chichester Cathedral

Towards the end of his life, Holst wrote Choral Fantasia (1930),^[1] and he was commissioned by the BBC to write a piece for military band; the resulting Hammersmith was a tribute to the place where he had spent most of his life, a musical expression of the London borough (of Hammersmith), which begins with an attempt to recreate the haunting sound of the River Thames sleepily flowing its way. He then made an orchestral version of this work for its first performance, sharing the programme with the London premiere of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. This unlucky coincidence may account for its subsequent obscurity as an orchestral work.

Interested as ever in new mediums, Holst wrote a score for the Associated Sound Film Industries picture 'The Bells' in which Holst believed he appeared as an extra in a crowd scene.^[33] However, he was mortified when he heard the quality of the 1931 soundtrack. The film was the victim of poor marketing and no copy can now be traced.^[34] He also wrote a 'jazz band piece' that his daughter later arranged for orchestra as Capriccio. A late flowering of academic life came when Harvard University offered him a lectureship for the first six months of 1932.

Holst had a lifetime of poor health, which worsened due to a concussion during a backward fall from the conductor's podium in 1923, from which he never fully recovered.^[6] In his final four years, Holst grew ill with stomach problems. One of his last compositions, the Brook Green Suite, named after the land on which St Paul’s Girls’ School was built, was performed for the first time a few months before his death. Holst died on 25 May 1934, of complications following stomach surgery, in London.^[35] His ashes were interred at Chichester Cathedral in West Sussex, with Bishop George Bell giving the memorial oration at the funeral.

Artistic Philosophy[link]

According to his friend Vaughan Williams, Holst once told him two things about art "that ought to be recorded":

1.) About '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 - he put it much better than that - but that is the gist.

2.) That the artist is born again & starts afresh with every new work."^[36]

Memorial[link]

On Sunday 27 September 2009, after a weekend of concerts at Chichester Cathedral in memory of Holst, a new memorial was unveiled to the public. On it are inscribed Holst's dates, and an epitaph, taken from the text of The Hymn of Jesus, reading "The heavenly spheres make music for us".

Radio and television biographies[link]

In 2007, BBC Radio 4 produced a radio play by Martyn Wade called The Bringer of Peace, which is an intimate biographical portrait of Holst. The play follows his early dismay at his lack of composing success, to the creation of The Planets suite, with the play's seven tiers following the structure of The Planets. Adrian Scarborough played Holst, and the producer was David Hitchinson.^[37]

Holst: In the Bleak Midwinter, directed by Tony Palmer, was first transmitted on 24 April 2011. The documentary charted his life with special reference to his support for socialism and for working class ventures.^[38]

Media[link]

Extracts from The Planets can be found in the main article for the suite.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Britannica Concise, "Gustav Holst", 2006, Concise.Britannica.com webpage: ConciseBritannica-GHolst.
• Encyclopædia Britannica Online, "Gustav Holst", 2006, Britannica.com webpage: Britannica2006-GHolst.
• Imogen Holst, The Great Composers: Holst. London: Faber, 1974. ISBN 0-571-09967-X
• Michael Short, Gustav Holst: The Man and his Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Kenric Taylor, "Gustav Holst (1874–1934) | Compositions" (list of works), 2006, GustavHolst.info webpage: GHolstInfo-Compositions.
• David Trippett, "A Biography of Gustav Holst: Part 2: 1903-1914", Music Web International, [1]

Further reading[link]

• Holst, Imogen, Gustav Holst: A Biography, Oxford University Press, 1938.
• Holst, Imogen, Gustav Holst and Thaxted (4-page pamphlet)
• Randel, Michael, The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, Harvard University Press, 1996. Cf. p. 390.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Gustav Holst

• Free scores by Gustav Holst in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
• Free scores by Gustav Holst in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)
• Free scores by Gustav Holst at the International Music Score Library Project
• The Mutopia Project has compositions by Gustav Holst
• www.GustavHolst.info
  • Ian Lace's Biography
  • List of compositions
• Gustav Holst: The Lost Films (Discovered 2009)
• The Planets Suite Op. 32 Live recording by Peabody Concert Orchestra (2002)
• Holst Birthplace Museum, Cheltenham
• Gustav Holst at Pytheas Center for Contemporary Music
• Compositions by Gustav Holst