One of Holst's most under-appreciated works Ode To Death (Op. 38) was written in 1919 in response to the First World War and mourned his friends who had died in that conflict. Scored for SATB Chorus and Orchestra it is a setting of the elegiac poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd by Walt Whitman. Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was an English composer and teacher. Having studied under Stanford and Parry he became a close friend of Vaughan Williams they would often critique each other’s work and influenced composers such as Tippet and Britten. He is best remembered for his Planets suite.
