Imogen Holst

Most widely remembered as a conductor and scholar of music by her father, Gustav, Imogen Holst composed a relatively small but intriguing number of compositions herself. Born in Richmond, UK, in 1907, her musical tastes were principally influenced by the Director of Music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School where she was educated—no other than the elder Holst. While she felt distaste for his earlier late-Romantic style, she fully imbibed the music performed at the festival he founded in Thaxted in 1916, including English folk songs and Tudor music. Imogen’s training in English folk dancing also influenced much of her music’s rhythmic lilt as well as her flamboyant conducting style. Her devotion to her father’s late works is apparent in her compositions for professional or highly capable performers (where she was freed from the limitations of amateurs, for whom she wrote a great deal), such as Three Psalms for choir and strings (1943), and equally in recordings she conducted of his music, including a fervent account of the then little-appreciated A Choral Fantasia (1930; recorded 1963). Her late choral masterpiece Hallo My Fancy, Whither Wilt Thou Go? (1972) equally shows her admiration for Britten, for whom she worked as musical assistant in Aldeburgh from the early ’50s. Although she stopped working for Britten in 1964 to devote herself to editing and promoting her father’s music, she remained in Aldeburgh and died there in 1984.