Mysticism and music 1: Gustav Holst's "The Hymn of Jesus" (free post)

This is the first of an occasional series — open to everyone — concerning composers who were influenced by various mystical traditions. These will not be biographies, much less a discussion of music theory. Rather, the focus will be on the mystical dimension a composer was attempting to conjure within us through his music. Each post will highlight a piece or pieces that — I hope — will inspire readers (and listeners) to engage in deep listening, allowing a work’s aesthetic components to convey us to an aural perception of the otherwise “inexpressible” something the composer was striving to reach. There will be no order, chronological or otherwise, in this freewheeling and somewhat eclectic series, but it will be “as the spirit moves me.” So, with this inaugural post, I look cursorily at Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934), and in particular, his 1916 work, “The Hymn of Jesus.”

(Gustav Holst, 1921. Photo by Herbert Lambert (1881–1936) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Holst was a British composer, although he was of Swedish extraction (via Latvia and Russia), and was given the name Gustavus Theodor von Holst at his birth — one can read a biographical sketch of him here. One can also view a touching half-hour 1984 interview with his daughter, Imogen, here:

Holst is, of course, best known for The Planets, an orchestral suite rooted in his profound interest in astrology and the archetypes associated with the planets. It was his attempt to compose a “music of the spheres.” Its seventh and concluding movement — “Neptune, the Mystic” — can justifiably be regarded as one of the most atmospherically “mystical” compositions in (to resort to a common misnomer) “classical” music. Its use of a female chorus singing offstage and joining in with the ethereal orchestral score (hauntingly, in E minor and G♯ minor) is breathtaking in its sublimity. This is sehnsucht in music.

Holst’s interest in mystical texts and religions, especially those of the East, is described succinctly in the short biographical entry from the New World Encyclopedia cited above:

Holst often looked to English folk music for inspiration but was also influenced by Hindu literature. As a student he developed and interest in Sanskrit texts as well as Indian music. These interests led to a fascination with Eastern mysticism. Like many composers of the early twentieth century, Holst held to the late-Romantic idea that extra-musical sources, such as mysticism, religious faith, mythology, nature and Oriental philosophy were valid ideas on which to base musical expression. His attempts at fusing these diverse influences with traditional "classic" forms were among the first efforts in England to look to non-traditional sources for inspiration.

In looking to non-traditional or non-western resources, Holst sought to achieve a harmony and cooperation beyond boundaries and to build musical bridges towards cooperation and peace. No entity's purpose was to exist in isolation. Extra-musical sources were ways to build on an unselfish give and take action.

A random example of his treatment of the Vedic hymns can be sampled here (and all of them can be found on YouTube):

But it is his “Hymn of Jesus” that I most want to highlight. As Raymond Head notes in a 1999 essay that can be read in its entirety here:

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 pulverising 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.

Using two majestic plainsong hymns, Vexilla Regis Prodeunt and Pange Lingua, dance elements, the spoken word, and his characteristic harmonies, Holst musically interprets — surprisingly — a powerful ancient Christian “Gnostic” text. I leave the rest to Raymond Head’s excellent description of the work:

…[I]n composing Saturn (1915) Holst had already written original music capable of evoking the most intense anguish. Such a personal exposition of suffering would have been very appropriate in the Prelude, but Holst seems to want to suggest something else: that humanity as a whole is wounded.

Immediately, from a distant region, the Pange Lingua is intoned by a choir of tenors and basses. Their sound is distinctly ecclesiastical and consolatory as they sing reassuringly of ultimate victory: ‘Sing my tongue the glorious battle, sing the ending of the fray...’. In such similar soothing tones had the trombones uttered this plainchant at the Prelude’s opening. This second half of the Prelude ends in an atmosphere of unearthly resolution and celestial bliss. A bar’s silence allows the listener to absorb the experience. By the end of the Prelude the G minor of the opening has begun to resolve, as from a long dominant pedal, toward C.

At this point we could have expected a meditation on the resurrection but what follows is the Gnostic Hymn of Jesus, which exhorts the listener not just to follow Jesus, but to understand why humanity suffers. Holst offered his audience hope through spiritual knowledge. Hence the affirmative, confident and daring setting - as far as is known, the first ever made of a Gnostic text. At a stroke Holst had cast aside the Victorian and Edwardian sentimental oratorio and created the precursor of the kind of works that John Tavener, for instance, was to write in the 1970s.

Since the discovery of a large library of Gnostic texts and mystical gospels in Egypt at Nag Hammadi after World War 2, we now know that the Gnostic church offered a coherent mystery alternative to conventional Christianity (based on the ideals of faith and obedience), interpreting it instead in symbolic terms and offering to unfold a secret doctrine that would lead to true spiritual knowledge (gnosis). This was hardly generally known when Holst encountered the Hymn. Very few Gnostic texts had been published or studied; they were generally classed among New Testament Apocrypha. However one scholar actively engaged in making these texts better known was Theosophist G.R.S.Mead, who was friendly with Holst and had published an edition of the major Gnostic gospel Pistis Sophia (The Testimony of Truth) as early as 1896.

In its original form, the Hymn probably dated from the 2nd century or earlier. Despite a call by Augustine for its destruction in the 4th century, when Gnostic Christianity was extirpated as heretical by the Greek and Roman churches, somehow a single manuscript copy managed to survive the vicissitudes of time. This was unearthed in the Imperial Library in Vienna in 1897 and published in 1899 by the Cambridge University Press in Apocropha Anecdota Part 2, edited by M. R. James. In this form it quickly came to the attention of Mead, who gave Holst a copy of the text. Attentive to new scholarly work coming from Europe, Mead had published his own translation of the text in Fragments of a Faith Forgotten in 1900, and in 1907 the Theosophical Publishing Company produced a his translation and commentary on the Hymn as a separate volume. (Note.6) Mead also published a further article in The Quest Vol 2, No 1 (1910) and another exposition of the Hymn in Quests Old and New (1912). Clearly he was fascinated by this text. Why?

The answer seems to be that, according to Mead, it was not a hymn at all in our sense of the word but perhaps the earliest surviving Christian, or indeed pre- Christian, mystery-ritual. Its appeal to Holst was similar to that of the Vedas he had treated in the works of his ‘Indian’ period: not only its authentic message, but its very early date and its origins outside of the distorting effects of the established churches.

Holst may well have come across Mead’s 1907 booklet soon after it was published. On 3 November that year he gave a lecture at Morley College on the origins of modern music during which he mentioned the origins of dance in religion, a subject which deeply interested him and offended others. In his booklet Mead quotes extensively from Philo of Alexandria’s famous descriptive treatise On The Contemplative Life, about the sacred dances and rituals of the Therapeuts in Upper Egypt. In any case Holst was not one to compose in a rush and he laid ideas in store for many years. Clifford Bax (Arnold Bax’s writer brother, who was also a Theosophist) referred to this as Holst’s ‘elephantine gestation’ period.

The tragic events of 1914-16 prompted Holst to find a deeply philosophical and musical response and he looked again at The Hymn of Jesus. Early in 1917 he began to translate the Greek text with the aid of his pupil Jane Joseph (who was later to make the remarkable vocal score), Clifford Bax and G.R.S. Mead. This process, as with translating the Vedas some years before, was musically suggestive to him; it also helped to clarify the meaning of the text. In the end Holst’s translation was quite different from Mead’s published version, much more direct and more rhythmic.

Very briefly, according to Mead the ‘hymn’ is a ritual of initiation involving a Master (Jesus?) and his disciples, who form a circle enclosing a would-be initiate in a question-and-answer dialogue. Hence Holst’s request that the two choirs should be ‘well separated’. Mixed choir 1 represents the Master, mixed choir 2 the initiand. But at the beginning both choirs are united, singing the majestic affirmations ‘Glory to Thee, Father! Glory to Thee, Word!’. Characterized by astonishing, explosive chordal dislocations - C to E major, and C to A flat minor - these outcries are fortified by a large orchestra, including organ and piano, and a walking step bass which allows for harmonic ambiguity. There is also an invocation to ‘Grace’ and the remarkably original spoken setting of ‘Glory to Thee, Holy Spirit’ in which the sounds should span the distance between one mixed choir and the other. After each affirmation the ‘heavenly’ treble choir responds with an ‘amen’ (whereas in the original Greek text it is the assembled disciples who say ‘amen). Sounds are thrown backwards and forwards between each choir, soon reaching a powerful climax at ‘O shadowless light! Amen’. Imagine how overwhelming this would be if the audience were placed in between the two choirs!

The mystery ritual proper begins; a penitent initiand pleads:

Student (Choir 2): Fain would I be saved
Master (Choir 1): Fain would I save
S: Fain would I be released
M: Fain would I release
S: Fain would I be pierced
M: And fain would I pierce
S: Fain would I be borne
M: Fain would I bear
S: Fain would I eat
M: Fain would I be eaten

Urgently, excitedly, the demands of the initiand become more animated as each request is answered immediately by the Master. The two choirs interact with increasing passion, culminating in the Master’s serene ‘I am Mind of all’. (This is one example where Holst’s translation from the Greek is much more direct than Mead’s.) Suddenly all the pent-up energy is released on, ‘Mind’ into a calm pool of pianissimo E major. This E major stasis of Mind (Mead refers to understanding and stability at this point) engenders invigoration, as a 5/4 allegro dance begins in the orchestra. This is a major change: although the music has been impassioned before, has not been vigorous.

The distant trebles lead the dance with ‘Divine Grace is dancing’: it seems to be an answer to ‘fain would I be known’ - in other words, dance is an essential ingredient of the Divine and therefore an essential element in its praise. We know Holst held this view. In this extended section the dance element takes on, at times (beginning at ‘The heavenly Spheres make music for us’), a Bacchic exultancy, a Martian drive recalling The Planets and foreshadowing the Choral Symphony. At its height the choirs sing, in the extreme brightness of C sharp major, ‘Ye who dance not, know not what we are knowing’. The soul must join the dance to attain true Gnosis. ‘Amen’ (‘so be it’) sing the distant trebles.

But the suppliant continues his yearnings to be spiritually set in ‘order’, to be ‘infolded’ or brought within the mystery. In this process there follows fear of loss of home, of resting place and temple, as the initiand yearns for the ultimate experience of hierogamos [“sacred marriage”] and unio mystica. But while in each case the Suppliant’s music is in an agitated 5/4, in each case the Master is reassuring, always answering with composure and authority in 5/2. The dance section reaches a climax in F sharp major in the full orchestra before it dissolves into one of the most striking sections of the whole work: the refulgent proclamation ‘To You who gaze, a lamp am I. To you that know, a mirror. To you who knock, a door am I. To you who fare, the way’.