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Bill Hopkins's orchestration of Debussy's ‘Lindaraja’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Extract
In spring 1975 the British composer and writer Bill Hopkins completed an orchestration of Debussy's Lindaraja. Paul Griffiths has reported that Hopkins believed this to be ‘the only one of Debussy's piano works which was intended as a sketch of an orchestral composition’. As an expert on both French music and orchestration, Hopkins was admirably qualified for the job. But as we have no written record of his ideas on the subject we need to analyze the musical evidence as it stands, to see what might justify his view of the piece.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997
References
1 Quoted in Hodges, Nicolas: ‘The Music of Bill Hopkins – a preliminary approach’, Tempo 186 (09 1993), p. 11 n 18Google Scholar. As MrGriffiths, points out in a letter to the editor (Tempo 187, p.60)Google Scholar the orchestration was not completed after Hopkins's arrival at Birmingham University in September 1975, as erroneously stated in the above article. According to the composer's diary it was completed on 3 May 1975.
2 As G.W. Hopkins he contributed the Grove articles on Boulez, Dukas and Ravel, as well as sections 4 and 5 (‘19th Century’ and ‘Impressionism and Later Developments’) of that on Orchestration. He also taught orchestration at Birmingham and Newcastle Universities. The ascription of the Lindaraja orchestration in the Ms. to Bill Hopkins rather than G.W. Hopkins indicates a particular emphasis. He once said that ‘G.W.…never composed a note in his life’.
3 A transcription for solo piano by Roger-Ducasse was published simultaneously with die two-piano original. As the manuscript has been lost, these two publications form the only sources.
4 Vallas, Leon, Claude Debussy el son temps, p. 276 Google Scholar.
5 Debussy, Oeuvres Complètes, Series I, volume 8 p.xviii–xixGoogle Scholar.
6 Debussy, Oeuvres Complètes, Series I, volume 8 p.xviii Google Scholar. Lee's recordings Lindaraja are on Astrée (with Bernard Ringeissen) and Arion (with Christian Ivaldi).