Funded by a National Cataloguing Grant, the new Holst Online Catalogue, prepared by the Britten-Pears Library, follows on the success of earlier digital projects like the online Britten Thematic catalogue. Archivist Judith Radcliffe and her team faced a daunting task in cataloguing 375 boxes of documents and manuscripts centred on the life and career of Imogen Holst, and also containing significant archival material about her father, Gustav. These documents were organized by Imogen herself, with subsequent revisions by Rosamund Strode and Britten-Pears Library staff. The current project attempts to preserve these earlier efforts, while also modernizing and streamlining the organizational structure. The catalogue is generally organized into eight categories, the first seven representing material accessioned to the Britten-Pears Foundation in 2008, and the last category collecting material gathered since then.
The Library has set up a special user-friendly online portal (www.imogenholst.org) for the Holst Online Catalogue. This includes a biography, comprehensive list of works, bibliography and discography for Imogen, as well as pages dedicated to contextualizing the collection itself. Lavishly illustrated with archival material, this provides a resource unto itself for those researchers perhaps unfamiliar with Imogen's importance to so many strands of British music history. There is also a page which suggests a number of important directions that this archive-based research could take. Two particularly fascinating features are the detailed digital walk-through of Imogen's modernist cottage at 9 Church Walk in Aldeburgh (including the soundproof room where much of this collection was long held), and the manuscript to her unpublished overture, Persephone (1929).
The actual link to the collection proper, which is part of the integrated catalogue of the Britten-Pears Library, is slightly buried on a sub-page that also then provides the general architecture of the catalogue. The records within the catalogue, no matter their place in the site hierarchy, are comprehensive, often including helpful notes about annotations on the items from previous cataloguers. Each page has its own permalink and all records include a parent record hierarchy, as well as a space for notes on related material. In addition, an extremely helpful navigation menu floats at the right of the screen allowing users to return to search results, reset the search, print the record, or see a list of related items. This last feature is particularly helpful in ensuring complete bibliographic control over the particular topic being researched. It is worth noting that if one goes to the Britten-Pears integrated catalogue page directly, one can find the catalogue in question by searching Holst Archive under ‘title’.
One of the most exciting prospects of this project was full-text access to manuscript material by both Imogen and Gustav Holst but, as with many digital humanities projects, the panacea becomes tempered by reality. Unfortunately, financial and copyright constraints mean that the full-text offerings in the integrated catalogue are currently only a fraction of the collection as a whole. The ‘search the collection’ page of imogenholst.org offers a helpful list of full-text highlights in the archive though no direct link to these is included (a minor inconvenience that might grow to an annoyance for one constantly returning to these materials). Of perhaps greatest interest in the current full-text offerings is the extensive correspondence between Imogen, Isobel and Gustav Holst. Because of copyright issues, letters to the Holsts from those outside the immediate family are not available as full-text online. Additionally, there are instances where the Britten-Pears Library only holds copies of original letters by the Holsts. These are also not available as full text. A telling example is the correspondence between Imogen and Helen Asquith, photocopies of which can be found in the Rosamund Strode research files, and which were presumably made from originals held by Helen Asquith (I have been unable to trace where the originals reside). In such cases, it would perhaps be helpful to have a cross-reference in the Imogen Holst correspondence section noting the presence of such letters elsewhere in the archive. The full-text correspondence currently available reveals the unique family life of the Holsts while also shedding light on a complicated relationship between daughter and father. It is my understanding that the number of full-text items available online will increase in the coming years. For example, materials related to Gustav's service in the YMCA during the First World War were recently made available as full text (in conjunction with an exhibition at the Holst Birthplace Museum in Cheltenham, http://holstmuseum.org.uk/gustav-holsts-ww1-with-the-salonika-forces/).
Though this catalogue represents a huge improvement in access to the Holst materials held in Aldeburgh, exciting challenges remain. For example, there is a large cache of interviews conducted by Rosamund Strode for her Imogen Holst biography project, which are currently housed on tape. While transcripts of all of the interviews have been made, the original audio is a priceless resource that can often convey much more than the transcript. This collection is often overlooked by scholars and can be difficult to access. Digital technology and the internet offers an unparalleled opportunity to make these interviews available for researchers (if rights can be obtained). Such primary-source material should be of interest not only to scholars of the Holsts but of Aldeburgh, Britten's circle and British musical culture in general in the second half of the twentieth century.
Taken as a whole, the new Holst Online Catalogue and its associated webpages offers an unparalleled introduction to the life and work of Imogen Holst, which will no doubt generate much-needed scholarship on those subjects. Our understanding of her gifts as a composer has for too long been obscured by her general tendency to forego her own ambitions to serve others, principally Benjamin Britten, but later also her father's legacy. The former topic is well-illuminated by the archive, and those interested in the circles surrounding Britten and Pears and the early history of the Aldeburgh Festival will find much of use though, again, not all is necessarily currently available as full text.
Imogen's work as a writer, editor, performer and businesswoman on behalf of her father's legacy is also well documented in the collection. This information raises thorny issues around her approach to the shaping of history through writing and archival materials. The 2007 publication of Imogen's diary, edited by Christopher Grogan, which included the different texts she prepared for public and private consumption, suggests she felt the need to shape archival materials to reflect her own preferred narrative of events. As her personal papers were long housed in her cottage, there is no way to tell whether the materials accessioned to the Britten-Pears Library represent the accrual of a lifetime or a collection carefully curated for public consumption. This side of Imogen Holst, in no way malevolent and deeply committed to what she saw as ‘the truth’, deserves greater study, especially in terms of its impact on the legacy of both her father and, to a lesser extent, Britten. The wise decision by the Britten-Pears Library to carefully document, as much as possible, the complex history of curatorship represented in the Holst Collection makes it an important resource for understanding efforts by Imogen and others to shape public perception. For example, including transcripts of Imogen's organizational comments in many files allows the researcher to reconstruct the material as she wanted it presented. In some cases, it is clear that there are some items that Imogen wished to be left out of the collection which subsequent archivists left in place. Additional material from Rosamund Strode, the Holst Foundation, and G and I Holst Limited help to further contextualize Imogen's efforts on behalf of her father's legacy and her own. To explore these issues, though, one still needs to travel to Aldeburgh, as much of the material that applies to these questions is not available in full text.
Though Imogen deposited the vast majority of her father's manuscripts in the British and Bodleian Libraries, a number of lesser known works (mostly unpublished and/or early) as well letters, diaries and sketches by Gustav still reside in Aldeburgh. Understandably, he has not received the contextual treatment by the project that Imogen received, but given the richness and the unique nature of its holdings, the library might consider such treatment as the Sesquicentenary of Holst's birth approaches.
One other figure who emerges strongly as worthy of research is Rosamund Strode, who worked closely with Imogen and Britten, and later took up the torch for both Holsts after Imogen's death. Strode's place in the Aldeburgh firmament is ripe for consideration. The composer Colin Matthews, who worked closely with her, is right in his Guardian obituary that Strode took much unique information with her to the grave,Footnote 1 but she also left a great deal for us to discover about both Imogen and Gustav Holst and Aldeburgh in general, and one important part of that is what is now catalogued in this collection.
Technology is changing the way researchers work, but over the last few years, with the explosion of projects in the Digital Humanities, it has also become clear, especially in the realm of archival research, that digitization, rather than being a straightforward democratizing panacea, introduces daunting new problems for the researcher. The Holst Online Catalogue is largely successful in negotiating the challenges by placing transparency at the centre of their advocacy for the archives of the historical figures in their care. That in itself suggests another fascinating area of research alluded to in recent scholarship about Britten, especially the work of Paul Kildea: the transformation of the Britten-Pears Library itself from a protective gatekeeper of information towards an unrestricted facilitator of knowledge. With the addition of Imogen Holst and Rosamund Strode to the archive the early period of this process begins to be archivally documented. Within constraints of copyright law and funding the Holst Online Catalogue is an important contribution to this process, illuminating seminal figures in the history of British music in the twentieth century and the cultures that surrounded them.
