The Hymn of Jesus: Holst’s Spiritual Exploration of Time and Space

Gustav Holst’s The Hymn of Jesus (written in August 1917) has always been one of his most widely performed works. Its first performance in London in 1920 was an outstanding success; Ralph Vaughan Williams, the dedicatee, said he just ‘wanted to get up and embrace everyone and then get merry’. Yet perhaps it is taken too much for granted. There remains the mystery why Holst chose to set an obscure apocryphal text in ancient Greek at a time of national catastrophe in the First World War. What was he offering his audience? See below and play the music:

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