HENRY

See also:

• HUGO, GUSTAV VON (1764–1844)
• HUGO, VICTOR MARIE (1802-1885)

HUGO [properly HENRY

See also:

• HUGH
• HUGH, ST

HUGH

See also:

• PEARSON, CHARLES HENRY (1830-1894)
• PEARSON, JOHN (1612-1686)
• PEARSON, JOHN LOUGHBOROUGH (1817-1897)

PEARSON]

See also:

• HENRY HUGO [properly HENRY HUGH PEARSON] PIERSON (181 1873)

PIERSON (181 1873)  , English composer, was the son of the Rev . Dr Pearson of St John's College, Oxford, where he was born in 1815; his father afterwards became dean of Salisbury . Pierson was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was at first intended for the career of medicine . His musical powers were too strong to be repressed, and after receiving instruction from Attwood and A . T . Corfe he went in 1839 to Germany to study under C . H . Rink, Tomaschek and Reissiger . He was elected Reid Professor of Music in Edinburgh in 1844, but, owing to a disagreement with the authorities, he resigned in the following year, and definitely adopted Germany as his country about the same time, making the change in his names noted above . His two operas, Leila (Hamburg, 1848) and Contarini (Hamburg, 1872), have not retained their hold upon the German public as his music to Faust has done, a work which until quite recently was frequently associated with Goethe's drama . Ile was never recognized in England as he was in Germany, for most of his career fell in the period of the Mendelssohn fashion . His' most important work was the oratorio Jerusalem, produced at the Norwich Festival of 1852, and subsequently given in London (Sacred Harmonic Society, 1853) and Wurzburg (1862) .

For the Norwich Festival (at one of the meetings a selection from his Faust music was given with success) he began an oratorio,

Hezekiah, in 1869; it was not finished, but was given in a fragmentary condition at the festival of that year . These two large works and a number of Pierson's songs, as well as the three overtures played at the Crystal Palace, reveal undeniable originality and a wealth of melodic ideas . He was weak in contrapuntal skill, and his music was wanting in outline and coherence; but in more fortunate conditions his great gifts might have been turned to better account . He died at Leipzig on the 28th of January 1873, and was buried at Sonning, Berks., of which parish his brother, Canon Pearson, was rector .