Musicians - Robert Lucas de Pearsall

Home > Listing Index > Musicians > Robert Lucas de Pearsall

	Musicians - Robert Lucas de Pearsall

Robert Pearsall (March 14, 1795 - August 5, 1856), English composer.

Born in 1795, Pearsall was brought up in Bristol and moved to nearby Willsbridge in Somerset in 1817. He was a practising barrister until a mild stroke in 1825 persuaded him of the need to convalesce abroad, and he eventually settled in Switzerland, although he frequently returned to Britain. Fundamentally, Pearsall was an amateur composer and only a fraction of his work was published in his own lifetime, much of which is now overlooked.

He is principally remembered, however, for reviving the madrigal with such compositions as ‘Lay a Garland’ and ‘I saw lovely Phillis’. He was also a prolific composer of church music. Most notable is his famous setting of ‘In dulci jubilo,’ written in 1832.

Pearsall may not be considered an innovative composer, indeed there is much to suggest that he was something of a reactionary individual, prone to romantic affectations. For example, he liked to style himself ‘Pearsall of Willsbridge’, apparently to distinguish him from a musical namesake, and he eventually prefixed his surname with “de”. He was fasinated by history, heraldry and genealogy, and for many years lived in some style in his Swiss castle, Schloss Wartensee. Also, he would set his own verse to music, the words echoing the style and sentiments of Elizabethan poetry as, for example, in ‘Why do the roses’, written in 1842:

Why do the roses whisper to the wind, and toss their heads so high?

O gentle zephyr, tell me what they said as you pass’d by.

Say, do they look with envy at the bloom

On Flora’s cheek that glows?

O well they know it mantles there,

Surpassing any rose.

Pearsall married Marie Henreitte Elizabeth Hobday in 1817, at St. Andrew's Holborn, London, and they had four children. He died at Wartensee in 1856 and was buried in the castle chapel.

Although rarely performed today, his work was praised by no less a composer than Gustav Holst, and he perhaps deserves greater prominence in the pantheon of English composers. He has achieved some posthumous recognition, for example his ballad ‘Sir Patric Spens’, written in 1838, was only published six years after his death and was played in the Royal Command Concert on Empire Day in 1938.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Robert Lucas de Pearsall ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Robert Lucas de Pearsall; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay