The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins : Volume VI: Sketches and Scholarly Studies, Part II: Musical Settings and Sketches

This volume brings together for the first time two lesser-known aspects of Gerard Manley Hopkins's creative drive: his sketches and drawings and his musical compositions. The drawings are presented with a full introduction and annotations. The musical compositions feature as both manuscript facsimiles and new transcriptions.

Sketches and Scholarly Studies: Part II, Musical Settings and Sketches brings together two crucial aspects of Gerard Manley Hopkins''s insatiable drive to create: drawing, predominantly (but not exclusively) from the early part of his life, when he had ambitions to be a painter; and music, from the later part of his life, when he found in music suggestions of a new contact with the eternal. Hopkins grew up in a home that emphasized cultural and artistic accomplishments; his brothers Arthur and Everard were both professional illustrators, and his sister Grace was an accomplished pianist. Limited as the corpus of Hopkins''s drawings is--four small sketchbooks and a handful of loose drawings--there is certainly evidence to suggest that he might have been a successful illustrator adhering to Ruskinian principles. This edition reproduces the surviving drawings, with a full introduction and annotations placing them in the context of Hopkins''s creative life. His musical compositions are presented in both manuscript facsimiles and new transcriptions, revealing his exploration, in a new mode, of ideas of rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint.