4 Vedic Hymns from Op.24 (1907–8) 152

1 Ushas (Dawn)

3 Maruts (Stormclouds)

6 Song of the Frogs

9 Faith

2 Humbert Wolfe songs from Op.48 (1929) 76

6 The Floral Bandit

12 Betelgeuse

One of the several paradoxes associated with Holst’s development as a composer is that it was only when he got to know English folk song – through his friendship with Vaughan Williams in the first decade of the 20th century – that he was able to find the musical language for the ancient Hindu literature he so clearly identified with. The Somerset Rhapsody, for example, was written only shortly before the Vedic Hymns Op.24 where, for the first time, his translations from the Sanskrit found an appropriate setting. None of the present selection of four (out of nine) Vedic Hymns sounds particularly English, still less Indian, but each has its own idiom, unerringly applied. The economy of Ushas, where the first eight lines are acompanied by no more than a few well chosen chords to offset the harmonically rapturous lines that follow, the excitedly galloping rhythms of Maruts, the grotesque comedy of Song of the Frogs, the devotional radiance of Faith: all these are demonstrations of Holst’s new-found art in song writing.

Composed more than 20 years later, the Humbert Wolfe settings are that much more mature – although, in fact, only a handful of songs were written in the meantime. The Floral Bandit, with its allusions to Debussy and Schubert and its clavichord imitation, is as delightuful in its sophistication as Betelgeuse is desolate in its astral remoteness.