Gustav Holst

The Holst Songbook Vol. 4 for Low Voice

Thirteen songs for high voice. Gustav Holst composed solo songs for voice and piano at various stages of his career, but with an abundance from the late 1890s (towards the end of his student days) into the early 1900s. Richard Capell, writing in The Musical Times in January 1927, mentions that songs by Holst were appearing in the programmes of London recitals early in the 1900s and several early examples were heard in company with the first performances of Vaughan Williams' Songs of Travel and The House of Life in 1904. Only a relatively small number of Holst's songs were published and, of those that were, many have been out of print for some time. The Holst Songbook (in 4 volumes, published in versions for both high and low voice) brings together all the solo songs for the first time and presents a wonderful opportunity for these hitherto undiscovered gems to be performed and appreciated for the first time. And, we hope, recorded too.
Volume 4 includes four songs dating from Holst's relatively mature years, between the 1910s and 1929, and these complete the higher H numbers allocated by Imogen (his daughter) to the songs she considered worthy of being performed and possibly published. Imogen was fairly dismissive of much of her father's early output and refused to use her H-numbering sequence for works dating from 1894 or earlier. This volume concludes with these early songs, now allocated H App numbers as a means of cataloguing.

CONTENTS: A Vigil of Pentecost (Range: A-D); May Day Carol (Db-Gb); The Ballad of Hunting Knowe (B-F); Epilogue (B-D); The Harper (A-E); I Come from Haunts of Coot and Hern (B-D#); Sing Heigh-Ho (Bb-G[E]); A Lake and a Fairy Boat (C-D); There Sits a Bird (B-F#); Anna-Marie (B-G); The White Lady's Farewell (Ab-Eb); The Coquette/Die Strode (Bb-F); There is Dew for the Flow'ret (D-E).

The audio sample is a computer-generated performance [no words!] with male soloist. See GM368 for the HIGH voice version where the audio has a female voice.