In the two previous articles in this series (TEMPO 158 and 160) I examined how Holst became involved in Indian studies, and how his involvement essentially reflected a pattern of growing awareness of India in the West. The vedic hymns were a revelation to him, and obsessed him for several years. During this period (the first decade of the 20th century) Holst's ideas about music began to change: partly because he was in the process of rejecting his immediate musical past, and partly because he had discovered that an investigation of folksong and renaissance music might help him develop a more personal style. For a time the old and the new co-existed, often uneasily, as is especially evident in two of his major ‘Indian’ works—the opera Savitri, and the cantata The Cloud Messenger.