| Description |
Gustav Holst, throughout his life manifesting a rather mystic penchant, was, in his early career, quite taken with Hindu writings? it was as a result of his studies in Sanskrit that his chamber opera Savitri , Opus 25, emerged in 1908. Based on a story in the Mahabha - rata, the one act opera tells of a devoted wife (Savitri) who, through unusual fortitude and pointed acumen, releases her husband (Satyavan) from the supposedly irrevocable call of Death. While a detailed analysis of the work is fascinating in and of itself, disclosing important attributes of Holst's compositional approach at a turning point in his creative life, such an analysis be comes much more valid when it sheds light on the aesthetic, artistic, and, in this instance, spiritual meaning of the piece. This is the purpose of the analysis undertaken for this study. Here, musical sounds become symbols for ideas and broad philosophical concepts. Motifs, themes, key and pitch areas, spec |
