English composer of Swedish origin, Holst studied the piano with his father and was admitted to the Royal College of Music in London in 1893.

He went on to become a music teacher and composer and, in 1898, joined the Carl Rosa Opera and the Scottish orchestra as trombonist.

He later became director of music in various important British schools and he was also professor of composition at the Royal College of Music and at Reading University.

Holst’s music had a variable reception in his life-time, but he exercised a strong influence on later English composers.

From his final chamber opera "The Perfect Fool", first staged in 1923, with its parodies of Verdi and Wagner, comes a better known ballet suite. The opera itself is seldom performed.

As a choral conductor, Holst wrote a considerable amount of choral music, accompanied and unaccompanied, including arrangements of folk-songs, and a smaller number of solo songs.

By far the best known of all Holst's compositions is "The Planets", a sequence of seven movements, reflecting the composer's interest in astrology and the generally attributed qualities of each, with Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity, providing the melody for a popular patriotic hymn, while Mars, The Bringer of War, suggests the period of composition, between 1914 and 1916.

For string orchestra he wrote the St. Paul's Suite, completed in 1913, and in 1933 the Brook Green Suite.

The two Suites for military bands were written in 1911.