This grant was awarded in 2022 and accounted for in that year, but the purchase was not completed until 2023.
Laura Kinnear, Curator, writes: In 2023, the Holst Victorian House was fortunate to acquire one of the most significant archives of Gustav Holst-related material to come up for sale in decades. Consisting of over 30 items, and including two autograph manuscripts, the collection highlights the important relationship between the composer and his supporter, Louise Dyer.
Australian-born Louise Dyer (1884-1962) first met Gustav Holst in 1924, a year which he spent mostly alone in Thaxted recovering from a serious nervous breakdown. At a time when he had had to give up most of the teaching activities which had both exhausted and stimulated him during the previous 20 years, her detailed interest in and enthusiasm for his music helped kick-start the next stage of his career. In Australia Dyer arranged several early performances of Holst’s music, including his most famous work, The Planets, and she published a catalogue of his compositions which is included in the collection.
In 1929 Holst composed The Dream City song cycle for a house-warming party for Louise and her husband James Dyer’s magnificent new home in Paris. In a five-page autograph letter in the archive Holst explained to Dyer: ‘The writing of it corresponded with your visit to London and ended on your last day here. It was the first music I had written for 13 months and the first song for 13 years and the first song with piano accompaniment for 20 years.’
Most of Louise Dyer’s extensive musical collection, including letters from Holst, has been held at the University of Melbourne since 2005. But the 34 items in this new collection remained in her family, including Holst’s gift to her of the autograph manuscript score of his Perfect Fool ballet music, one of his most popular works. It sheds significant new light both on the mutually supportive relationship between Dyer and Holst and on his development as a composer during the last decade of his life. Apparently unknown to Imogen Holst when she prepared her thematic catalogue of her father’s works for his 1974 centenary celebrations, this archive is a fitting and permanent celebration for 2024 – the 150th anniversary of Gustav Holst’s birth.
The archive will be displayed in summer 2024 in an exhibition co-curated by Holst expert, Philippa Tudor. Philippa will write a booklet to accompany the exhibition, exploring the impact of the relationship between Louise Dyer and Gustav Holst.
