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In an effort to discover a more personal style, free of Wagnerian overtones and more truly representative of English culture, Hoist took the curious step of studying the Rig Veda in considerable depth. The year was 1907, a time when others too were searching for different ideas. In America the young Henry Cowell, disillusioned with romantic harmonies, sought (about 1908) new rhythmic and melodic possibilities in Oriental music and studied it under Oriental teachers. The year 1908 was important for Schoenberg, then—with the support of his close friends—on the point of bursting the chromatic dam to release expressionistic torrents. Beset with similar stylistic problems, Hoist went instead to Luzac & Co, an orientalist bookseller, and bought the two volumes of Ralph Griffith's translations of The Hymns of the Rigveda, the most ancient literature in the world. Through these hymns he returned to the source of Indo-Aryan culture in the hope that a new type of music, free of former constraints, would be suggested to him.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986
References
page 27 note * Holst's motto found on two songs of the 1890's in British Library Add.ms 57867.
page 29 note * The solo Hymns were always conceived in groups, though often performed in different orderings. Hoist's notebook of 1907 gives the following arrangement: first group Dawn, Varuna, Maruts, Ratri; second group Creation, Aranyani, Frogs, Faith; third group Indra, Battle Song (Indra and Maruts). In 1908 he composed four more solo songs—Vac, Manas, Funeral Hymn, Varuna II. In additio`, the pencil markings and turned corners in his copy of the vedas suggest he contemplated further settings: Manyu (X, 83 and 84), the god of anger and passion, and Vayu (X, 168) the Wind-God. Manas, Funeral Hymn, and Battle Song appear to have been reworked into members of the choral groups, and no longer exist as solo songs. Unhappy with his setting of the hymn to Aranyani (X, 146), God of the forest and wilderness, he discarded it some time after 1914. Perhaps because of its brevity, Ratri too was put to one side when preparations were in hand for the publication of the solo hymns in 1919.
page 34 note * With the exception of the way he always accents the name Vārˇnˇ (never the anglicized Varūna).