Gustav Holst

Gustav Holst was born on September 21, 1874 in Pittville, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England as Gustavus Theodore von Holst. He was married to Isobel Harrison.

Around 1931, Holst was asked to compose music for a film. He attended a conference about the film, which was to be called The Bells (1931), based on a book by J.R. Ware, titled 'The Polish Jew'. The directors wanted Holst to finish the composition within a month so that recording could start. The music was to contain, "a storm prelude, a wedding feast and some dance music", and was to be written for small orchestra. When he was done composing, the recording sessions soon took place. Holst was very disappointed when the directors asked him to make changes in the scores. He became even more upset when he viewed a private screening of the movie and could not hear anything that was recognizable in his music, the recording and speakers both being so poor. The film was scheduled to be released in 1931, but in the end it was sold off to an American company to be premiered in the USA. Mysteriously enough, it was never released and neither the company nor film can found. The scores which Holst composed have also disappeared, and biographer Michael Short writes of Holst, "the only person who could remember them was an official of Associated Sound Films, who remembered a two track sequence in which a brass band and a pipe band, playing their own tunes, marched from different directions and came together.".