The second muse of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Abstract

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) pursued music intermittently throughout his short life. He was not only a composer but also an ad hoc theorist. Hopkins’s compositions, like his poems, remained almost entirely unknown during his lifetime. His theories about music and his compositions were distributed in the same way as the poems, as apercus in his letters to friends, with the manuscript scores enclosed. The purpose of this essay is to attempt a composite picture of Hopkins the musician.