Keith Bizeray replies to Roger Hecht:

>>I can't say whether the Planets influenced the great 20th century English
>>composers, but the dates of composition are right (1914-16), and I hear
>>more Holst in VW, et al.  than I do Elgar.
>
>No doubt one of the erudite Listers from BMUSIC will give a full reply,
>but I wonder whether the Holst you hear in RVW is not in reality the
>traditional / folk influence to be found in both.

It's true of very few Holst works.  Holst, unlike VW who used folk
elements throughout his career, moved away from folk music in his later
major compositions.  Furthermore, there are works by VW that seem to me
influenced by Holst's last phase: the Magnificat, Sancta Civitas, Symphony
No. 6, parts of Hodie, the Partita, and so on.

>The English folk movement was very pronounced, - not a casual thing, with
>much serious effort put in by Cecil Sharp et al to preserve the tradition
>before it was submerged in social change.  Both RVW and Holst collected and
>arranged a number of these tunes, and incorporated them in longer pieces.
>Some tunes were popular with both and occur in the work of both men.

For a really fresh look at the influence of folk music on VW and friends,
look at Frogley's Vaughan Williams Studies, published IIRC by Cambridge
University Press.

Steve Schwartz