Unlike most other British composers of the period (with the possible sole exception of Havergal Brian), it turns out that Gustav Holst, who was no stranger to the trombone, wrote a work for chorus and orchestra that uses a contrabass trombone.
A work contemporaneous with Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, which is also a form of cantata with a much larger orchestra featuring the use of an enormous brass section with contrabass trombone, The Cloud Messenger was conceived by Holst as he developed an interest in Indian mythology in the late 1890s and started work on the score in 1903, so that by Christmas 1910, work on The Cloud Messenger was largely complete. Holst continued to tinker with the score over the next couple of years before it was premiered on 4 March 1913 with the composer himself conducting the New Symphony Orchestra and the London Choral Society. The piece, which lasts approximately 40 minutes, is written in a rich, chromatic, post-Wagnerian style with great climaxes.
The most remarkable thing about this work is that compared with the other two large scale choral and orchestral works of the first decade of the 20th century, namely Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius (1900) and Vaughan Williams’ A Sea Symphony (1910), Holst’s The Cloud Messenger remains virtually unknown even until the present day.
Holst was even at pains to add a note in the instrumentation:
1 Contra bass trombone (Use this instrument and not a tuba whenever possible)
Incredibly, it took some 80 years before a modern performing edition enabled The Cloud Messenger to be heard in public for the first time since the 1930s! Last year marked the first time the work was performed at the Proms.
Leave a Reply