In her second RCM year Holst concentrated on composition, producing several chamber works including a violin sonata, an oboe quintet, and a suite for woodwind. She took her first steps towards personal independence when she moved from the family home to a bedsit near Kensington Gardens. In 1928 she went to Belgium with the EFDS, took an Italian holiday, and made an extended trip to Germany with a group known as "The Travelling Morrice" which promoted international understanding through music and dance. In October 1928 she won the RCM's Cobbett prize for an original chamber composition, her Phantasy String Quartet, and shortly afterwards was awarded the Morley Scholarship for the "best all-round student". The quartet was broadcast by the BBC on 20 March 1929, but for her, the achievement was overshadowed by the news that month of the premature death at 34 of her early mentor Jane Joseph. In the winter of 1929 Holst made her first visit to Canada and the United States, as part of an EFDS party. Back home, she worked on her RCM finals composition, a suite for brass band entitled The Unfortunate Traveller. Despite some apprehension on her part, the piece passed the examiners' scrutiny and was played at the college's end-of-year concert in July 1930. Before then, in June, Holst learned that she had been awarded an Octavia Travelling Scholarship worth £100, which would enable her to study composition abroad. Career European travels, 1930–31 Holst spent much of the period between September 1930 and May 1931 travelling. A hectic visit to Liège in September, for the International Society of Contemporary Music Congress, was followed immediately by a three-month round trip, to Scandinavia, Germany, Austria and Hungary, returning to England via Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin and Amsterdam. Her musical experiences included a Mozart pilgrimage in Salzburg, performances of Der Rosenkavalier and Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Vienna State Opera, Bach in Berlin and Mahler's Seventh Symphony in Amsterdam. On 1 February 1932 she left England again, this time for Italy. After a two-month tour Holst came home with mixed views on Italian music-making. She concluded that "the Italians are a nation of singers ... But music is a different language in that part of the world". Back in London, she decided that despite her experiences, "if it is music one is wanting, there is no place like London." Mainly teaching, 1931–38 With her