 According to the composer Edmund Rubbra, who studied under him in the early 1920s, Holst was "a teacher who often came to lessons weighted, not with the learning of Prout and Stainer, but with a miniature score of "Petrushka" or the then recently published Mass in G minor of Vaughan Williams".He never sought to impose his own ideas on his composition pupils.Rubbra recalled that he would divine a student's difficulties and gently guide him to finding the solution for himself.