Robert Lucas Pearsall (14 March 1795 – 5 August 1856) was an English composer.
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Pearsall was born at Clifton in Bristol on 14 March 1795 into a rich, Quaker family. His father, Richard Pearsall (died 1813), was an army officer and amateur musician. He was privately educated.[2]
Pearsall's mother, born Elizabeth Lucas, managed in 1816 to buy the Pearsall family house at Willsbridge, Gloucestershire from her brother-in-law, Thomas Pearsall, after the failure of an iron mill which had been in the family since 1712. However, Pearsall sold the house in 1837 after his mother died. The iron mill was converted by others into a flour mill, which still stands.[3]
Pearsall married in 1817 Harriet Eliza Hobday, daughter of a once-famous portrait painter, William Armfield Hobday (1771-1831).[4] They had four children, but separated finally in 1842. He initially practised as a barrister based in Bristol, but on suffering a mild stroke in 1825, he went with his family first to Mainz, then to Karlsruhe (1830-42), and later to Schloss Wartensee near Rorschach in Switzerland, where he remained until 1854. After falling ill at nearby St Gallen, where he had been living, he was taken back to Schloss Wartensee, where he was received by his son and estranged wife, and was nursed by his daughter Philippa. He died at Wartensee on 5 August 1856, and was buried in the vault of the chapel at the castle. When the chapel was deconsecrated in 1957, his remains were removed and reinterred at the Roman Catholic church at Wilen-Wartegg.
Pearsall's move abroad brought opportunities to develop his interests as a composer. Although it seems likely he had some instruction, or at least received advice, in composition from the Austrian violinist and composer Joseph Panny, most of his early attempts would appear to have been self taught. There is little evidence to support a claim made by Hubert Hunt that his early works included the Duetto buffo di due gatti, published under the pseudonym G Berthold and often attributed to Rossini. Though resident abroad, he kept in touch with his home city of Bristol. Pearsall's last visit to Willsbridge in 1836–37 coincided with the foundation and earliest meetings of the Bristol Madrigal Society, for which many of the madrigals and partsongs he wrote in the period 1836–1841 were composed. The success of his earliest works for the society encouraged him to write others, including 'The Hardy Norseman' and 'Sir Patrick Spens' (in ten parts), and eight-part settings of 'Great God of Love' and 'Lay a Garland'. His setting of 'In dulci jubilo' (in his original version for eight solo and five chorus parts) is still performed frequently at Christmas.[5]
Pearsall was an amateur composer. Many of his compositions were not published until after his death, and even now, many remain in manuscript. The particle de often added to his name is largely a posthumous affectation, propagated by his daughter Philippa, possibly to encourage sales of his work or to ennoble his memory - or both.[6]
Pearsall was the author of several articles and letters that contributed to scholarly understanding of early music in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions and helped to re-establish plainsong, Renaissance polyphony, and ancient church hymns in German and English-speaking countries.[7] His antiquarian interests, including history, heraldry and genealogy, his rejection of industrialisation, and his search for clarity in musical composition derived from earlier models, places him firmly in the Romantic movement. He also composed poetry, some of which he used for his madrigals, such as 'Why Do the Roses' (1842). In the 1830s, he made accomplished verse translations into English of Schiller's play William Tell in 1829 and Goethe's Faust.[8]
The composer Robert Cummings writes, "While Robert Lucas Pearsall wrote instrumental and orchestral music, he is best known for his vocal works, particularly for his madrigals and part songs, which he composed as a means of reviving Renaissance-era styles. He expanded on, rather than copied, them, adding structural features from the Classical period to forge a unique pastiche style, which yielded several masterly works, including the madrigals 'Great god of love' and 'Lay a garland'."[9]
Edward-Rhys Harry, until recently director of Bristol Chamber Choir (formerly the Bristol Madrigal Society mentioned earlier), was responsible for a landmark recording of Pearsall's setting of the Requiem Mass in 2009. Using Christopher Brown's edition (typeset by OUP in 2006), which was published by the Church Music Society, he created a new revised version which sought to address many of the issues raised by the original manuscript - specifically Pearsall's lack of definition regarding verbal underlay. The recording remains available from the Bristol Chamber Choir.[10]