A Moorside Suite

Composer: HOLST, Gustav
  • Holst composed this suite for brass band in 1928. He arranged the 2nd movement, “Nocturne,” for string orchestra the same year.1
  • This work was commissioned by the BBC and the National Brass Band Festival Committee2 as a test piece for the 1928 National Brass Band Championships of Great Britain at the Crystal Palace.3
  • Holst had been a gigging trombone player early in his career, often playing with bands at seaside resorts, so he was an experienced choice to compose this band piece, even though he was generally a symphonic composer. 4
  • Holst arranged mvt.2, “Nocturne,” for strings so that his student orchestra at St. Paul’s School could play it. However, Holst apparently wasn’t really convinced by his own results: he said of the arrangement, “…the obvious truth being that it is not real string music.” 5

Sources

  1. Colin Matthews, “Holst, Gustav(us Theodore von),” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 24, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013252.
  2. Stephen Arthur Allen, “Symphony Within: Rehearsing Holst’s A Moorside Suite” (Musical Times 158 no. 1941), Winter 2017, accessed October 24, 2019, https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P4-1973339836/symphony-within-rehearing-holst-s-a-moorside-suite.
  3. Roy Newsome, Brass Roots: A Hundred Years of Brass Bands and Their Music (New York: Routledge, 2018), ebook, accessed October 24, 2019, https://books.google.com/books?id=7ciWDwAAQBAJ&dq=brass+roots+major+british+composers+of+brass+band+music:+gustav+holst&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
  4. Stephen Arthur Allen, “Symphony Within: Rehearsing Holst’s A Moorside Suite” (Musical Times 158 no. 1941), Winter 2017, accessed October 24, 2019, https://www.questia.com/magazine/1P4-1973339836/symphony-within-rehearing-holst-s-a-moorside-suite.
  5. Ibid.

Cut IDs

16343