Beni Mora: Oriental Suite, Op. 29
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
First Dance; Second Dance; Finale: In the street of Ouled Naïls
In 1908, Gustav Holst was advised by his doctor to take a break for the benefit of his physical and mental health. There being no package holidays in those days, he oiled his bicycle and took it to Algeria for a pedal across the Sahara Desert. His musical aim was to reassess his talent and opportunities as a composer, having suffered setbacks, the most hurtful being a lukewarm reception for his opera Sivitri.
He was captivated by the sights and sounds of Algeria. On his return, he composed his ‘Oriental Suite’, a one-movement work imbued with the spirit of the music he had heard there. The following year he added two more movements, calling two of the three ‘dances’, and renaming it Beni Mora, a title borrowed from a Robert Hitchens novel, ‘The Garden of Allah’.
In Algeria, Holst was astonished by the juxtaposition of the exotic and the vulgar. In a letter to his wife, he described it as ‘...a mix of East and West where one moment I see an Arab woman leaving a mosque and another moment I see an advertisement for American Cinematography...’. Holst filtered out the Western influences and concentrated on the colour and mystery of Algerian music. The melodies of Beni Mora contain the characteristic intervals of the Orient, to an extent fulfilling some lay assumptions of what Arabic music should sound like. One commentator wrote, ‘The First Dance is the most conformist, complete with the nasal sound of the cor anglais, ‘oriental’ intervals and impassioned arabesques...’ Holst ‘borrowed’ the idiom but whether his melodies are quotations or imitations remains uncertain. They were exotic enough to irritate critics, one of whom wrote indignantly, ‘We didn’t ask for Biskra girls...’. At its première, the audience was divided. Some even hissed, but Holst’s friend Ralph Vaughan Williams (who had helped to fund his journey to Algeria) was enthusiastic and supportive. Since that first performance in 1909, Beni Mora has come to be regarded as Holst’s first mature work.
The second and third dances conform to expectations less strongly yet are probably more closely related to the music that Holst actually heard in Algeria. The character of the central dance is promoted mainly through its exotic orchestration, less by the choice of melody or mode. The final dance is the most thought-provoking of the three because it includes pointers towards ‘Holst yet to come’ which, for most of us, is ‘Holst of The Planets’. It is based on a motif he heard in an Algerian street: a four-note phrase played on a bamboo flute by a local peasant, over and again for two-and-a-half hours. To an extent, Holst relives that experience here, repeating a motif 163 times yet avoiding tedium through his innovative setting. A critic suggested, ‘...he creates a hypnotic atmosphere of torrid, highly-charged night air vibrating as the sounds of an approaching Arab procession mingle with those from the dancehalls and cafés lining the street’. This is indeed remarkable music, written four years before Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, yet evoking a comparable sense of excitement.
Did Holst ‘borrow’ musical material for Beni Mora? The clear answer is he did, and he acknowledged the fact. He sought to capture the alien yet bewitching qualities of Arabian music, and to make as much use of the local modes and melodies as suited his purpose. He was neither the first nor the last to do this, but Beni Mora avoids such picture-postcard approximations as are found in Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade or Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Holst delved beneath the surface of a folk culture and sought enrichment within a Western orchestral context. If you judge that he succeeded, then you might applaud rather than condemn the pilfering.
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
First Dance; Second Dance; Finale: In the street of Ouled Naïls
In 1908, Gustav Holst was advised by his doctor to take a break for the benefit of his physical and mental health. There being no package holidays in those days, he oiled his bicycle and took it to Algeria for a pedal across the Sahara Desert. His musical aim was to reassess his talent and opportunities as a composer, having suffered setbacks, the most hurtful being a lukewarm reception for his opera Sivitri.
He was captivated by the sights and sounds of Algeria. On his return, he composed his ‘Oriental Suite’, a one-movement work imbued with the spirit of the music he had heard there. The following year he added two more movements, calling two of the three ‘dances’, and renaming it Beni Mora, a title borrowed from a Robert Hitchens novel, ‘The Garden of Allah’.
In Algeria, Holst was astonished by the juxtaposition of the exotic and the vulgar. In a letter to his wife, he described it as ‘...a mix of East and West where one moment I see an Arab woman leaving a mosque and another moment I see an advertisement for American Cinematography...’. Holst filtered out the Western influences and concentrated on the colour and mystery of Algerian music. The melodies of Beni Mora contain the characteristic intervals of the Orient, to an extent fulfilling some lay assumptions of what Arabic music should sound like. One commentator wrote, ‘The First Dance is the most conformist, complete with the nasal sound of the cor anglais, ‘oriental’ intervals and impassioned arabesques...’ Holst ‘borrowed’ the idiom but whether his melodies are quotations or imitations remains uncertain. They were exotic enough to irritate critics, one of whom wrote indignantly, ‘We didn’t ask for Biskra girls...’. At its première, the audience was divided. Some even hissed, but Holst’s friend Ralph Vaughan Williams (who had helped to fund his journey to Algeria) was enthusiastic and supportive. Since that first performance in 1909, Beni Mora has come to be regarded as Holst’s first mature work.
The second and third dances conform to expectations less strongly yet are probably more closely related to the music that Holst actually heard in Algeria. The character of the central dance is promoted mainly through its exotic orchestration, less by the choice of melody or mode. The final dance is the most thought-provoking of the three because it includes pointers towards ‘Holst yet to come’ which, for most of us, is ‘Holst of The Planets’. It is based on a motif he heard in an Algerian street: a four-note phrase played on a bamboo flute by a local peasant, over and again for two-and-a-half hours. To an extent, Holst relives that experience here, repeating a motif 163 times yet avoiding tedium through his innovative setting. A critic suggested, ‘...he creates a hypnotic atmosphere of torrid, highly-charged night air vibrating as the sounds of an approaching Arab procession mingle with those from the dancehalls and cafés lining the street’. This is indeed remarkable music, written four years before Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, yet evoking a comparable sense of excitement.
Did Holst ‘borrow’ musical material for Beni Mora? The clear answer is he did, and he acknowledged the fact. He sought to capture the alien yet bewitching qualities of Arabian music, and to make as much use of the local modes and melodies as suited his purpose. He was neither the first nor the last to do this, but Beni Mora avoids such picture-postcard approximations as are found in Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade or Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. Holst delved beneath the surface of a folk culture and sought enrichment within a Western orchestral context. If you judge that he succeeded, then you might applaud rather than condemn the pilfering.