Robert Lucas de Pearsall
Robert Lucas Pearsall ( born March 14, 1795 in Clifton, now a suburb of Bristol in England; † August 5, 1856 at Schloss Wartensee Rorschacherberg, Canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland ) was an English lawyer and composer of the 19th century.
Life
Pearsall comes from a wealthy Quaker family and received a private education. His father was an officer in the British Army and music lovers. His mother bought in 1816 the parent company of the family in Willsbridge in Gloucestershire after the iron factory, which was owned by the family since 1712, had been led by her brother-in- bankruptcy. Pearsall sold the building, which had since been converted into a corn mill, but in 1837 after his mother had died again. The mill still exists today.
1817 Pearsall married the daughter of Harriet Eliza then known portrait painter William Armfield Hobday ( 1771-1831 ). The couple had four children, who had to be fed by the since 1821 practicing in Bristol lawyer. After a mild stroke in 1825 he gave up his practice and received from his doctors on the Council to look abroad treatment. In the same year he moved with his family to Mainz, where he studied music with, among others, Joseph Panny. From 1830 to 1842 he lived in Karlsruhe in 1832 and studied for a short time and early music notation with Caspar Ett in Munich.
1836/1837 he spent a year in England, both at the family home as well as in Bristol, to regulate the finances after the death of the mother. During this time he had close contact with the Bristol Madrigal Society, founded in 1837, whose member he was. The company, he devoted the next 14 years with occasional visits to the home of several songs or madrigals.
After the separation from his wife in 1842 he moved to the castle Wartensee in the canton of St. Gallen above Lake Constance. He had to Catholic monks in the vicinity and in Einsiedeln contact. After another stroke in St. Gallen in 1854 he went back to Castle Wartensee and was maintained there until his death two years later by his former wife and one of the sons. Shortly before his death he converted to the Catholic faith yet. He was buried in the castle chapel. His son built in the aftermath of the castle in the Gothic Revival style. After the official closure of the chapel in 1957 his remains were reburied in the Catholic Loretto Chapel Wilen - Wartegg Rorschacherberg.
Cultural interaction
Pearsall was an amateur composer, therefore, are to this day some of his works have not yet been published, but exist only as manuscripts. His daughter Philippa has obviously tried by adding the de or the de Willsbridge to make his person after his death, more interesting, and thus more marketable.
Pearsall has reawakened by essays and letters to the public interest in the music of the Renaissance and of old church music. Some of his madrigals he wrote the underlying texts. In the 1830s he made sure the translation of Goethe's Faust and Schiller's Wilhelm Tell were printed in the UK.