Unable to follow her initial ambitions to be a pianist or a dancer for health reasons, Holst spent most of the 1930s teaching, and as a full-time organiser for the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

[n 1] Gustav followed this family tradition; while studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM), he met Isobel Harrison, who sang in one of the amateur choirs that he conducted.

Imogen's main memories of this house were of her father working in his composing room on the top floor, which she was forbidden to visit, and of his efforts to teach her folk-songs.

[8] Descriptions of Imogen as a small child indicate that she had blue eyes, fair hair, an oval face reminiscent of her father's, and a rather prominent nose inherited from her mother.

[9] In 1917 Imogen began boarding at Eothen, a small, private school for girls in Caterham, where Jane Joseph, Gustav's star pupil from SPGS, taught music.

[14][n 2] Imogen left Eothen in December 1920 hoping to study under Ruby Ginner at the Ginner-Mawer School of Dance and Drama,[n 3] but was rejected on health grounds, although there appeared to be no significant medical issue.

At Whitsun 1921 she took part as a dancer in her father's production of Purcell's semi-opera from 1690, Masque of Dioclesian, held in the St Paul's School grounds and repeated a week later in Hyde Park.

In July 1923 she won the junior Alice Lupton piano prize, but her chances of distinction as a pianist were marred when she began to develop phlebitis in her left arm.

[20] Although destined like her father for the RCM, Holst first spent a year studying composition with Herbert Howells, piano with Adine O'Neill and the French horn with Adolph Borsdorf, while participating in the EFDS summer schools and other musical activities.

[24] In her second RCM year Holst concentrated on composition, producing several chamber works including a violin sonata, an oboe quintet, and a suite for woodwind.

In 1928 she went to Belgium with the EFDS, took an Italian holiday, and made an extended trip to Germany with a group known as "The Travelling Morrice" which promoted international understanding through music and dance.

[25] In October 1928 she won the RCM's Cobbett prize for an original chamber composition, her Phantasy String Quartet, and shortly afterwards was awarded the Morley Scholarship for the "best all-round student".

A hectic visit to Liège in September, for the International Society of Contemporary Music Congress, was followed immediately by a three-month round trip, to Scandinavia, Germany, Austria and Hungary, returning to England via Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin and Amsterdam.

Her musical experiences included a Mozart pilgrimage in Salzburg, performances of Der Rosenkavalier and Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Vienna State Opera, Bach in Berlin and Mahler's Seventh Symphony in Amsterdam.

"[35][36] With her scholarship funds exhausted, Holst needed a job, and in June 1931 took charge of music at the Citizen House arts and education centre in Bath.

[44] Among many positive comments from friends and critics, the composer Edmund Rubbra praised her for producing a book that was not "clouded by sentiment ... her biography is at once intimate and objective".

[48] Her compositional activity in these years was limited by time and pressures of work, but she produced two recorder trios—the Offley and Deddington suites—and made numerous arrangements for female voices of carols and traditional songs.

[52] Beginning in 1943, Holst established a one-year course, initially designed to train young women to organise amateur orchestras and musical events in rural communities.

[53] Holst's teaching methods, heavily based on "learning by doing" and without formal examinations, at first disconcerted her students and puzzled the school inspectors, but eventually gained acceptance and respect.

[65][65] Sensing that it was time to leave Dartington, she gave a year's notice, part of which was spent on sabbatical, studying Indian music at Rabindranath Tagore's university in West Bengal.

[63] Without definite plans for her future after Dartington, Holst toured Europe, collecting music that she would later edit for performance, including madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo which she found "very exciting".

The short timescale for the writing of the opera placed considerable pressure on the composer and his new assistant,[76] strains that were dramatised 60 years later in a radio play, Imo and Ben.

[n 8] Holst's main task with Gloriana was to copy Britten's pencil sketches and prepare the vocal and piano scores which the singers needed for rehearsals by February 1953.

[84] Holst continued to assist Britten with all his major compositions until 1964, at that point she determined to give priority to the final securing of her father's musical legacy, to re-establish her career as a composer, and to pursue a more independent path.

[105] By this time Imogen's performances at the festival had become increasingly rare, but in 1975 she conducted a concert of Gustav Holst's brass band music, held outdoors at Framlingham Castle.

[109] The centenary was the occasion for the publication of the first volume of a facsimile edition of Gustav Holst's manuscripts, on which Imogen worked with the help of the composer Colin Matthews.

[120] Ursula Vaughan Williams wrote: "Imogen had something of the medieval scholar about her ... content with few creature comforts if there was enough music, enough work, enough books to fill her days.

[19] In 2007, Holst's centenary was recognised at Aldeburgh by several special events, including a recital in the parish church by the Navarra Quartet in which works by Purcell and Schubert were mixed with Imogen's own The Fall of the Leaf for solo cello, and the String Quintet.

[121] Holst never married, though she enjoyed a number of romantic friendships, notably with the future poet Miles Tomalin, whom she met when she was a pupil at St Paul's.

[128][129] "Early Tippett and Gerald Finzi are perhaps Holst's closest matches stylistically, but it's the String Quintet that really shows off her independence, with its rustic depictions in its first two movements, and a complete change of mood for the finale, which is a set of variations on the last theme written in her father's notebook" The oeuvre comprises instrumental, vocal, orchestral and choral music.