Bill Hopkins

British composer, teacher and writer Bill Hopkins was born in Prestbury, Cheshire on 5 June 1943. He studied with Luigi Nono at Dartington Summer School, with Edmund Rubbra and Egon Wellesz at Oxford University and with Olivier Messiaen and Jean Barraqué in Paris.

He worked in London as a music critic (usually as G W Hopkins - his full name was George William Hopkins), then lived in Tintagel, Cornwall and then Peel on the Isle of Man, concentrating on composition but also working as a translator of books from French and German into English. Later he was a research fellow at Birmingham University and then a lecturer at Newcastle University.

Bill Hopkins died suddenly from a heart attack on 10 March 1981, aged only thirty-seven, leaving several of his compositions unfinished. Completed works included a ballet, various chamber works (including two with soprano), instrumental works and a 1975 orchestration of Lindaraja by Claude Debussy.

 

A selection of articles about Bill Hopkins

Resounding Echoes by Robert McCarney - Imaginary Concert No 1