Fate cruelly labels some great artists as one-hit wonders. Some believe Orson Welles never amounted to much beyond Citizen Kane, though he certainly did. John Milton wrote more than Paradise Lost, and not just verse. Leonardo da Vinci did not stop at the Mona Lisa. Equally, there was far more to Gustav Holst than his world-famous, frequently performed and endlessly recorded (there are more than 80 interpretations) orchestral suite The Planets.
It is remarkable, however, that many musically literate people struggle to name other works by the composer, born Gustavus von Holst in Cheltenham 150 years ago this month to a family of professional musicians of Scandinavian, German and Latvian descent (he dropped the von during the Great War). The disregard with which British classical music is often treated may partly explain ignorance of his achievements: out of snobbery, many regard the less obvious works of British composers as not worth expending too much intellectual curiosity upon. Holst is far from alone in enduring this neglect – or perhaps contempt. Another problem is that people often know what they like; they like The Planets, which most encounter through no conscious effort, but lack the motivation to explore its composer’s canon more widely.
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