The years 1900 through 1912 could be thought of as the British composer Gustav Holst's (1874-1934) "Sanskrit" period, writing music inspried by ancient Hindu texts and poems. The Rig Veda is a set of over 1000 hymns – singing the praises of the sacred plant soma and gods like Varuna, Agni, and Indra – brought by Indo-European speaking peoples into India somewhere around 1500-1000 B.C. Holst set 14 of these hymns to music in his four groups of Choral Hymns, […]