Jon Ceander Mitchell and I have been friends for nearly forty years. We have been members of the same professional organizations, have given papers at the same conferences, and have supported each other in our separate fields. I was a member of the Board of the International Society for the Research and Promotion of Wind Music (IGEB) that in 1990 published Mitchell's first book, From Kneller Hall to Hammersmith: The Band Works of Gustav Holst, as volume 11 in their Alta Musica series and was given to every member as a benefit of their membership.

Having had the pleasure of seeing his tome published in such a distinguished series, you would think Mitchell would close the book on Holst and move on to other projects. He did, writing works on Holst's friend and fellow composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and music critic Philip Hale, but he also continued to amass new information on Holst to the point where he felt the thirty-five-year-old book needed to be expanded and updated. I am sure the reader will be amazed at and pleased with the new information presented here, in a reference book that all serious band directors and music educators should have.

Some years ago, a distinguished band director of a major American university remarked that band music started with Holst's First Suite in E-flat. Although that shows a complete ignorance of the history of serious band music that can be dated back even to the French Revolution, not to mention the wealth of music written for Harmoniemusik, the earlier form of band music, it does show the reputation Holst had in the Anglo-American band world, a reputation the author of this volume hopes to revitalize.