The origin of Hammersmith: Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 52 is a study of the West London borough Gustav Holst called home for nearly forty years. The influence behind the work is a vivid collision of geography and literature: on one hand, the deep, unhurried flow of the River Thames; on the other, the “cockney” bustle of the street markets pushing through the crowds. The immediate catalyst, however, was A.P. Herbert’s 1930 novel The Water Gipsies, which follows a girl torn between the world of a river bargee and that of an aristocratic painter. Holst was moved by this irreconcilable paradox, eventually dedicating the score to the author.

1930 was actually one of the most energized and happy composing years of Holst’s life. When the commission arrived from the BBC Wireless Military Band, it sparked a period of creative renewal. Because he was writing for high-caliber professionals rather than students, Holst perhaps felt liberated to push technical and harmonic boundaries. He wasn’t interested in a literal “tone poem” with a strict narrative; instead, he sought to capture the “persistent, unconquerable” character of the district from his soundproof room at St Paul’s Girls’ School (Short, Gustav Holst: The Man and His Music, p. 296).

To articulate this urban friction, Holst utilized bitonality, playing in two different keys simultaneously to show that the river and the city occupy the same space without ever truly mixing. In the slow, brooding “Prelude,” the low brass grinds out a heavy bass line in F minor, while the horns float a lyrical, long-breathed melody in the totally unrelated key of E major. It is a cool trick; rather than sounding like a clash of wrong notes, the spacing creates a misty, gray, and dimension-less atmosphere.

The resulting piece is split into two distinct movements: the Prelude and the Scherzo. The river is represented by the Prelude which Holst noted “was there before the crowd and will be there presumably long after.” The Scherzo, by contrast, bursts from the gloom with a frantic, syncopated energy, the musical equivalent of a Saturday night market. Hammersmith acts as the ultimate synthesis of Holst’s personality, marrying the cold mystic of Egdon Heath with the sociable bandmaster of his earlier suites. Yet, he refuses to force a happy ending where these themes hold hands. At the conclusion, the bustling city simply fades out as the eternal, indifferent river reasserts itself.

Hammersmith was marked by a disastrous premiere and a lingering mystery. The orchestral version debuted at the Queen’s Hall on November 25, 1931, but it was unfortunately eclipsed by the London premiere of William Walton’s massive Belshazzar’s Feast. The audience found Holst’s subtle philosophy uncomfortably austere, and some even booed. Deeply hurt, Holst scribbled a rare note of frustration in his diary: “Emma [his nickname for the work] Imogen Gussie disconsolate and want our revenge” (Mitchell, A Comprehensive Biography… Part 2, p. 405).

The original band version suffered its own bizarre journey. Holst was scheduled to conduct the world premiere in Washington D.C. in 1932, but a bleeding ulcer confined him to a hospital bed in Boston. The premiere proceeded without him, conducted by Captain Taylor Branson of the US Marine Band, but was largely forgotten for decades. It wasn’t until 1954 that the band version was “rediscovered” and championed by Robert Cantrick at Carnegie Tech (Cantrick, Music & Letters, p. 211).

Bibliography

• Cantrick, Robert. “Hammersmith” and the Two Worlds of Gustav Holst. Music & Letters, Vol. 37, No. 3, 1956.
• Holst, Imogen. Gustav Holst. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938.
• Holst, Imogen. The Music of Gustav Holst. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951.
• Mitchell, Jon C. A Comprehensive Biography of Composer Gustav Holst with Correspondence and Diary Excerpts. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 2001.
• Rapp, Willis M. The Wind Band Masterworks of Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Grainger. Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2005.
• Short, Michael. Gustav Holst: The Man and His Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.