The Sunday Musical Offering ~ Gustav Holst: The Hymn of Jesus

During my High School days (in a galaxy far, far away….), I had the great pleasure of singing for a number of years in the “School/Community Project”. This annual event was the inspiration of the Director of the Music Department at Montclair High School, Bill “Mac” McClellan. Bill was one of the great influences in my life; a wonderful musician; and a good friend.

Montclair, New Jersey

The “Project” brought together High School students and members of the greater community to perform major classical works with a full professional orchestra. The rehearsals began in the fall on Friday evenings culminating in a single performance mid-winter. The chorus was made up of 150 to 200 singers (ages 15 to 70) with deep and abiding friendships nurtured over the years. We performed the compositions of Mendelssohn, Saint-Saens, Rachmaninoff, Orff, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Honegger, Poulenc, Brahms, Wagner, Dukas, Verdi, Britten, to name but a few. By the way, tickets for the performance in 1978, as recorded by the New York Times, cost all of four dollars!

The most memorable performance was an evening of music by the English composer, Gustav Holst, with his daughter, Imogene, in attendance. Selections from The Planets were  performed followed by The First Choral Symphony and the Hymn of Jesus. Holst composed this last piece during the final five months of 1917 from a text taken from the Apocryphal Acts of Saint John. These writings appealed to Holst so strongly that he learned Greek in order to read the original and make his own translation. What follows is taken from the Gustav Holst website:

  

“The Hymn of Jesus has always been one of Holst’s most widely performed works. Its first performance in London in 1920 was an outstanding success; Ralph Vaughan Williams, the dedicatee, said he just ‘wanted to get up and embrace everyone and then get drunk’. Yet perhaps it is taken too much for granted. There remains the mystery why Holst chose to set an obscure Gnostic text in ancient Greek at a time of national catastrophe in the First World War. What was he offering his audience?

“Undoubtedly, the work is Holst’s artistic and philosophical response to the War; to suffering so intense, and on such a scale, that it was scarcely comprehensible. By 1916 hostilities had reached a pulverizing stalemate and conscription had been introduced in Britain. Unlike his friend Vaughan Williams (who had enlisted in 1914) Holst had been denied participation because of his health. The final impetus for producing The Hymn of Jesus may well have been the Battle of the Somme. During five months of 1916, over two million people were slaughtered, including George Butterworth and others of Holst’s friends. Despite a successful Whitsuntide musical gathering at Thaxted, his mood had become edgy and uncharacteristically explosive. Yet far from being elegiac, The Hymn of Jesus - his first major work after completing The Planets - is a very positive and constructive response to suffering.” (Raymond Head, www.gustavholst.info)

If you have never heard this piece before, you are in for a real treat. Youtube only had a “complete” recording of the work dating from 1945 featuring Sir Malcolm Sargent. The recording I have selected (London Symphony and Chorus under Richard Hickox) is divided in three sections but worth the listen none the less.

Enjoy this "mystical dance" of solemnity and gaiety! And pause for a moment to give thanks for a teacher who made a difference in your life like “Mac” did in mine.

Love One Another - Brian