Robert Lucas Pearsall (14 March 1795 – 5 August 1856) was an English
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and Defi ...
mainly of vocal music, including an elaborate setting of "
In dulci jubilo
"In dulci jubilo" (Latin for "In sweet rejoicing") is a traditional Christmas carol. In its original setting, the carol is a macaronic text of German and Latin dating from the Middle Ages. Subsequent translations into English, such as J. M. N ...
" and the richly harmonic part song ''
Lay a garland "Lay a garland" is a popular English poem from the play ''The Maid's Tragedy'' (Act II, Scene I) written in 1608-11. The poem was famously set to music by Robert Lucas de Pearsall on 4 June 1840, scored for SSAATTBB in Eb. In 1854, Pearsall produce ...
'' of 1840, both still often performed today. He spent the last 31 years of his life abroad, at first in Germany, then at a castle he bought in Switzerland.
Biography
Pearsall was born at Clifton in
Bristol
Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...
on 14 March 1795 into a wealthy, originally
Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
family. His father, Richard Pearsall (died 1813), was an army officer and an amateur musician. Pearsall was privately educated.
In 1816 Pearsall's mother, Elizabeth (née Lucas), bought the Pearsall family's home at
Willsbridge
Willsbridge is a village in the unitary authority of South Gloucestershire, England, located on the outskirts of Bristol. Willsbridge Castle, situated on a prominent hillside site, was built around 1730, with crenellations added in the nineteen ...
,
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean.
The county town is the city of Gl ...
(now part of Bristol), from her brother-in-law, Thomas Pearsall. Thomas had been ruined by the failure of the iron mill that had been the family's business since 1712. After the death of his mother in 1837, Pearsall sold Willsbridge House again, but although he would never live there again, he regularly chose to be known in publications as 'Pearsall of Willsbridge'. As for Willsbridge Mill, it was later converted into a flour mill and it stands to this day.
Pearsall married Harriet Eliza Hobday in 1817. She was the daughter of a moderately successful portrait painter,
William Armfield Hobday
William Armfield Hobday (1771 – 17 February 1831) was an English portrait painter and miniaturist whose clientele included royalty and the Rothschild family.
Life
Hobday was born in Birmingham, the eldest of 4 sons of Samuel Hobday (1746 ...
(1771–1831).
The couple had four children — two boys (although the first son died in infancy) and two girls — all of them born in Bristol. In their early years of marriage, Pearsall practised as a
barrister
A barrister is a type of lawyer in common law jurisdictions. Barristers mostly specialise in courtroom advocacy and litigation. Their tasks include taking cases in superior courts and tribunals, drafting legal pleadings, researching law and ...
in Bristol, but in 1825 he took his family to live abroad: first to
Mainz
Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main (river), Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-we ...
, then to
Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...
(1830–1842). In 1842, evidently after a long period of strain in their relationship, husband and wife separated. Pearsall used the money from the sale of the house at Willsbridge to buy Wartensee Castle, a ruined medieval keep near
Rorschach Rorschach may refer to:
* Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist
** Rorschach test, his psychological evaluation method involving inkblots
* Rorschach (character), a character from the comics ''Watchmen''
* Rorschach (comic book), a 2020 comic
* ...
in Switzerland. After purchasing the castle, he spent several years restoring the keep and building a suite of apartments adjacent to it. He remained there until his death on 5 August 1856, and was buried in the vault of the castle chapel. When the chapel was deconsecrated in 1957, his remains were removed and reinterred in the nearby Roman Catholic church at Wilen-Wartegg.
Composer
Pearsall's move abroad brought opportunities to develop his interests as a composer. Although it seems likely that he had some instruction, or at least received advice in composition from the Austrian violinist and composer
Joseph Panny, he would still appear to be self-taught when he wrote most of his early attempts. 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
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards f ...
. Though resident abroad, he kept in touch with his home city of Bristol. Pearsall's last visit to Willsbridge in 1836–1837 coincided with the foundation and earliest meetings of the
Bristol Madrigal Society, for which many of the madrigals and part songs 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 "Lay a garland" is a popular English poem from the play ''The Maid's Tragedy'' (Act II, Scene I) written in 1608-11. The poem was famously set to music by Robert Lucas de Pearsall on 4 June 1840, scored for SSAATTBB in Eb. In 1854, Pearsall produce ...
".
Pearsall's setting of the medieval German Christmas carol "
In dulci jubilo
"In dulci jubilo" (Latin for "In sweet rejoicing") is a traditional Christmas carol. In its original setting, the carol is a macaronic text of German and Latin dating from the Middle Ages. Subsequent translations into English, such as J. M. N ...
" (in his original version for eight solo and five chorus parts), is one of his most popular works and still performed frequently at Christmas. A 2008 survey by ''
BBC Music Magazine
''BBC Music Magazine'' is a British monthly magazine that focuses primarily on classical music.
History
The first issue appeared in September 1992. BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the BBC was the original owner and publisher toget ...
'' found Pearsall's setting to be the second most popular choral Christmas carol with British cathedral organists and choirmasters.
The carol was originally written as a mixture of Latin and German text, and Pearsall, a scholar of German literature, replaced the German sections with English words to rhyme with the Latin phrases. His original text phrasing reflected the pronunciation of
English Vernacular Latin prevalent at the time — thus Pearsall rhymed "O Jesu parvule" with "My Heart is sore for Thee" – but in later versions these phrases have been replaced by "I yearn for Thee alway", reflecting a shift in pronunciation to a more Italianate style of Latin speech.
Pearsall's arrangement of "In dulci jubilo" was included by Sir David Willcocks and Reginald Jacques in their popular 1961 music-score collection ''
Carols for Choirs
''Carols for Choirs'' is a collection of choral scores, predominantly of Christmas carols and hymns, first published in 1961 by Oxford University Press. It was edited by Sir David Willcocks and Reginald Jacques, and is a widely used source of ...
''.
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'' before his name was propagated by his daughter Philippa.
Philippa Swinnerton Hughes, Geni.com
/ref>
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. His antiquarian interests, including history, heraldry
Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known branch ...
and genealogy
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kins ...
, his rejection of industrialisation, and his search for clarity in musical composition were derived from earlier models and place 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
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (, short: ; 10 November 17599 May 1805) was a German playwright, poet, and philosopher. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller developed a productive, if complicated, friendsh ...
's play ''William Tell
William Tell (german: Wilhelm Tell, ; french: Guillaume Tell; it, Guglielmo Tell; rm, Guglielm Tell) is a folk hero of Switzerland.
According to the legend, Tell was an expert mountain climber and marksman with a crossbow who assassinated Albr ...
'' in 1829 and Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...
's ''Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540).
The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads ...
''.
Present appreciation
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. This yielded several masterly works, including the madrigals "Great God of Love" and "Lay a Garland"."
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pearsall, Robert
1795 births
1856 deaths
English classical composers
English madrigal composers
English expatriates in Switzerland
English male classical composers
19th-century English musicians
19th-century British male musicians