Egdon Heath (Holst)

Egdon Heath, Op. 47, H. 172, subtitled "A Homage to Thomas Hardy", is a tone poem by Gustav Holst, written in 1927. Holst considered it his most perfectly realised composition.

Egdon Heath is a fictional place in the equally fictional region of Wessex in the south-east of England, where Thomas Hardy set all his major works. The novel The Return of the Native is entirely set on Egdon Heath, and it is also referred to in The Mayor of Casterbridge and the short story The Withered Arm. During the writing of the tone poem, Holst met and walked with Hardy on a real heath reminiscent of Egdon Heath.

Holst included a quotation from The Return of the Native at the head of the score. He expressed the desire that the Hardy quote always appear in program notes.^[1]

A place perfectly accordant with man’s nature – neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither common-place, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony! ^[2]

Holst calls for a normal orchestra but with extra strings. The tone poem takes about 13-14 minutes to play.

The work was written for the New York Symphony Orchestra, in response to their commission of a symphony.^[3] The NYSO premiered it at the Mecca Temple on 12 February 1928, conducted by Walter Damrosch.^[4] Hardy had died three weeks earlier, on 11 January, and in tribute to him, an extract from The Return of the Native was read out by Paul Leyssac at the first performance.^[4]

The first British performance occurred the next day, 13 February 1928, at Cheltenham, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer.^[4] The first performance in London, on 23 February 1928, was met with a noisy and unappreciative audience.^[5]

Holst considered the work his most perfectly realised composition, an opinion shared by Ralph Vaughan Williams and others.^[4] But it has never had the profile of works such as The Planets and St Paul's Suite. In 1934 Edwin Evans speculated on why the public had not yet shared the composer's assessment:

Its chromaticism verges on the atonal – there are many passages to which it is difficult to assign a definite tonality. Yet the effect is not vague in the musical sense. It is the emotion that sets the ear guessing. It is one more frequently expressed by painters. One is reminded of those landscapes which at the first glance present a flat, monochrome surface and come to life gradually as the eye probes into them. ^[6]

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