The “Serious” Catalog: Understanding Holst’s Opus Numbers
Gustav Holst’s approach to assigning opus numbers was, by his own admission, inconsistent. Complicated by publication delays and the composer’s own ruthless self-criticism, the sequence of numbers does not always align with the chronology of composition. However, these numbers remain the primary map for navigating his mature output.
Holst began formally assigning opus numbers with his student opera The Revoke (1895), labeling it Op. 1 in a notebook intended to track his professional output. This created a deliberate boundary between his “mature” attempts and the earlier student manuscripts he dismissed as “Early Horrors” or “pot-boilers.”
The Logic of Grouping
Because Holst often had to wait years for his best work to be published, the opus numbers frequently group disparate works together by period rather than by release date. He often utilized “Numbers” to distinguish separate pieces within a single opus. A prime example is Opus 29, which contains three vastly different works composed between 1909 and 1913: the Oriental suite Beni Mora, the withdrawn suite Phantastes, and the famous St Paul’s Suite.
This grouping can occasionally create chronological confusion. For instance, the First Suite in E flat (1909) is cataloged as Op. 28 No. 1, immediately followed by the Second Suite in F (1911) as Op. 28 No. 2, despite other opus numbers being composed in the intervening years.
The Missing Numbers: Withdrawn Works
Holst was highly critical of his own music and famously believed that failure was a necessary part of an artist’s training. Consequently, several opus numbers correspond to works that he withdrew after hearing them performed.
- Op. 11 (The Youth’s Choice): Withdrawn after a rehearsal where critical remarks convinced Holst the libretto was “impossible.”
- Op. 29 No. 2 (Phantastes): After its premiere in 1912, Holst felt the musical humor “did not quite come off” and deleted the title from his list of compositions.
- Op. 36 (Phantasy on British Folksongs): A string quartet he later referred to as a “guilty secret” and withdrew after a 1917 performance confirmed his doubts. (This has since been recorded and released)
The list below represents the sequence of works Holst acknowledged as his professional canon, ranging from the early promise of The Revoke, Op. 1 to the choral mastery of Six Choruses for male voices, Op. 53.