Hammersmith
Prelude and Scherzo
Gustav HOLST (1874-1934)
Commissioned by the BBC for the military band, Hammersmith followed Holstfs two Suites for Military Band and orchestral suite, The Planets much later, both in terms of composition (1930) and publication. Not the crowd-pleaser of the Suites, this is an intricate contrapuntal work that is one of the masterpieces of both Holst's oeuvre and the band literature.
As
Imogen Holst puts it, the music is g...the outcome of long years of
familiarity with the changing crowds and the changing river. Those Saturday
night crowds, who were always good natured even when they were being pushed off
the pavement into the middle of the traffic. And the stall holders in the narrow
lane behind the Broadway, with their unexpected assortment of goods lit up by
brilliant flares. And the large woman at the fruit shop who always called him 'dearie'
when he bought oranges for his Sunday picnics at St. Paul's...h
Split into a Prelude and Scherzo, the shifting bitonal lines of the Prelude evoke the incessant, dark flow of the river that flows through the Hammersmith area (where Holst lived, for thirty-nine years on and off), a river that Holst himself said, 'goes on its way unnoticed and unconcerned.' Ironically, this is equally true of much of Holst's own music during this time. It is perhaps then interesting to note that the first performance of the Hammersmith (the orchestral revision) incited boos from the audience! Curiously, the original version for military band was only performed in 1954, a mere 49 years ago.