Composer
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.
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.
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 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.
Read more about this topic: Robert Lucas De Pearsall
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