Holst's great-grandfather, Matthias von Holst, was of Nordic origin, and came to England in 1802 from Riga, Latvia.

Holst's father, Adolph von Holst, was organist and choirmaster at All Saints ' Church in Pittville.

Holst's mother, Clara Cox von Holst ( née Lediard ), who died in 1882, was a singer and pianist who bore two sons, Gustav and Emil Gottfried ( who later became Ernest Cossart, a film actor in Hollywood ).

Vaughan Williams's own music was in general quite different from Holst ’ s, 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.

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 ".

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 ).

The premiere was at the Queen's Hall on 29 September 1918, conducted by Holst's friend Adrian Boult before an invited audience of about 250 people.

Holst's use of orchestration was very imaginative and colourful, showing the influence of Arnold Schoenberg and other continental composers of the day rather than his English predecessors.

The orchestral premiere of The Planets suite, conducted at Holst's request by Adrian Boult, was held at short notice on 29 September 1918, during the last weeks of World War I, in the Queen's Hall with the financial support of Holst's friend and fellow composer H. Balfour Gardiner It was hastily rehearsed ; the musicians of the Queen's Hall Orchestra first saw the complicated music only two hours before the performance, and the choir for " Neptune " was recruited from pupils from St Paul's Girls ' School ( where Holst taught ).

Holst's original title ( clearly seen on the handwritten full score ) was " Seven Pieces for Large Orchestra ".

Although commonplace today, the effect bewitched audiences in the era before widespread recorded sound — after the initial 1918 run-through, Holst's daughter Imogen ( in addition to watching the charwomen dancing in the aisles during " Jupiter ") remarked that the ending was " unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women's voices growing fainter and fainter ... until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence ".

Pluto was discovered in 1930, four years before Holst's death, and was hailed by astronomers as the ninth planet.

Dedicated to the late Imogen Holst, Gustav Holst's daughter, it was first performed in Manchester on 11 May 2000, with Kent Nagano conducting the Hallé Orchestra.

* Piano duet ( four hands ) – An engraved copy of Holst's own piano duet arrangement was found by John York.

Dave Edmunds ' band Love Sculpture included the Mars movement on their 1970 album " Forms and Feelings ," though this was only included in the U. S. version of the album due to Holst's family preventing worldwide release of the track.

Permission to use pieces was sometimes denied by the composer's family or estate, as for instance with Gustav Holst's Mars, the Bringer of War.

Meyer's original plan for the score was to adapt Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets.

* " Mars, the Bringer of War ", a movement in Holst's The Planets

* " Mercury, the Winged Messenger ", a movement in Gustav Holst's The Planets

The euphonium is featured in a few late Romantic and 20th century works, usually playing parts marked " tenor tuba ", including Gustav Holst's The Planets, and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben.

Holst's original manuscripts for it are now in the holdings of the Royal College of Music (" Mars ", " Venus ", " Saturn ", " Uranus ", " Neptune "), Royal Academy of Music (" Mercury ") and British Library (" Jupiter ", " Saturn ", " Uranus ").

Col legno is used in the final movement of the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Frédéric Chopin, which predates the more famous use in the " Dream of Witches ' Sabbath ", in the final movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, in the score of the film Alien by Jerry Goldsmith, as well as in " Mars, the Bringer of War " from Holst's The Planets, the first movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, and Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain.

Among English composers of the early-20th century there was some vogue for the use of a " bass oboe ", for example in Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets ( 1916 ), as well as in several works of Frederick Delius ( A Mass of Life, 1904-1905 ; Dance Rhapsody No. 1, 1908 ), Arnold Bax's Symphony No. 1 ( 1921 ), Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony ( 1919-1927 ) and Symphony No. 4 ( Das Siegeslied ), and supposedly in the original instrumentation of Ralph Vaughan Williams ' A London Symphony ( 1912-1913 ).

The longest track on the album is a chaotic instrumental piece called " The Devil ’ s Triangle ", which was built around quotations from Gustav Holst's " Mars: Bringer of War " from his The Planets Suite.

Gustav Holst's " Neptune, the mystic ", part of the orchestral suite The Planets written between 1914 and 1916, is an early example of music to have a fade-out ending during performance.

" The Hymn of Jesus: Holst's Gnostic Exploration of Time and Space ", July 1999

Holst's music is well known for unconventional use of metre and haunting melodies.

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 ".

Music which employs singing but does not feature it prominently is generally considered instrumental music ( e. g. the wordless women's choir in the final movement of Holst's The Planets ) as is music without singing.

These included Phase 4 Stereo recordings of Gustav Holst's The Planets and Charles Ives's 2nd Symphony, as well as an album entitled " The Impressionists " ( music by Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Honegger ) and another entitled " The Four Faces of Jazz " ( works by Weill, Gershwin, Stravinsky and Milhaud ).

Holst's daughter Imogen, recorded 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 ".

The music includes Holst's theme as well as original material by Stroope.

Mann's interest in English 20th century classical music saw him adapt Gustav Holst's Planets Suite, garnering an unlikely UK hit with a version of the " Jupiter " movement, with lyrics added, entitled Joybringer ( included on the 1973 album Solar Fire ).

The theme music used was " Mars, Bringer of War " from Gustav Holst's The Planets.

* On the DVD Menu, the music played in the background involves themes from Gustav Holst's Jupiter from The Planets Suite.

* The music playing when Lisa is in the museum and first develops her inspiration for astronomy is Jupiter from Gustav Holst's The Planets Suite.

The music in the introduction of the film is from Gustav Holst's ' The Planets-Mars the bringer '

) 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.

Also, from October 1969 to the song's last performance in May 1975 at the Earl's court shows, the violin solo and the solo section after would incorporate " Mars " from Gustav Holst's suite The Planets, accompanied by Plant's vocalisations.

Nixa also made original recordings in England at the Walthamstow Assembly Hall of Sir Adrian Boult conducting Holst's The Planets Suite, Vaughan Williams English Folksongs Suite, and others.

He made a famous recording of Holst's The Planets with the Boston Symphony for Deutsche Grammophon, after learning the piece at the age of 70.