MS Mus. 1844/5/2

Copy manuscript (folios originally numbered 1-71) written in the (now detached) pages of a notebook, the boards of which have been covered in brown paper.

Title on (brown paper) front cover: 'Psalmodia / by / Robert Lucas de Pearsall, Esq. / of Willsbridge House Co. Gloucester & of / the Castle of Wartensee Switzerland. / Vol: III / (System of Chanting)'.

Bookplate with monogram on inside front board. A note on the facing front flyleaf (in a different hand to the manuscript) observes that the manuscript is 'probably' in the hand of 'a member of Pearsall's family'. In respect of this statement, there is a relevant pencil annotation (on the verso of folio originally numbered 14), referring to the notation on the facing recto (15): 'Music & words in my father's handwriting (Philippa)'. The annotation suggests that the manuscript is in the hand of Philippa Swinnerton Hughes (née Pearsall).

The manuscript has been marked throughout in blue pencil, occasionally correcting the text as if for publication and sometimes striking-through elements, as is the case with (Philippa's) pencil annotation, and other annotations (by her?) in pencil.

With red ink annotations (in German, instructions to printer) on the folio originally numbered 2.

The first page of the manuscript (the original title-page) has also been struck-through in blue pencil: 'Observations on Chanting. Explanatory of a new System, relative to that branch of the Art of Music; and written for the purpose of simplifying it, so that children and persons without musical education, may be easily taught to chant according to given rule. By R. L. de Pearsall, of Willsbridge in the County of Gloucester. Written at Wartensee, on the Lake of Constance, the 27th of August 1851.'

Edited by William Barclay Squire, the manuscript was published in Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 8. Jahrg., H. 2. (1907), pp. 166-220a. Available here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/929118

For 'Psalmodia' Vol. I, see Add MS 38549.