William Pearson

William Pearson was an English music printer active in London at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He is recorded in the British capital around 1671, and he is thought to have died there in 1735, although neither his birth nor his death is known with certainty, so the dates should be taken as approximate. His importance lies in the improvement he introduced to the technique of printing music, at a time when engraving on metal was beginning to displace typography in this field.

He was an apprentice to John Heptinstall and, in 1698, set up on his own in London. The following year he published Twelve New Songs, in which he used for the first time a type he named the "new London character". Compared with earlier types, it gave a clearly superior result. Shortly afterwards he formed a partnership with Henry Playford, for whom he printed numerous first-rate publications, among them Mercurius musicus, John Blow's Amphion Anglicus, several editions of An Introduction to the Skill of Musick, parts of Wit and Mirth, the second volume of Henry Purcell's Orpheus Britannicus and fragments of Harmonia sacra. The partnership was dissolved in 1703 following a lawsuit, and Pearson continued working independently until 1735. After his death, the business passed to his widow, Alice Pearson, who kept the same type for some music publications, such as John Wesley's Methodist hymnal A Collection of Tunes, Set to Music as They Are Commonly Sung at the Foundery, of 1742.

Pearson exploited his type with remarkable skill. He was one of the first printers in London able to print round noteheads and quavers and semiquavers both grouped and separate, advantages he himself emphasised in the preface to Twelve New Songs. His pages stand out for the clarity of their impression and for an attractive layout that gives them a surprisingly modern appearance. Between 1699 and 1735 he was responsible for most of the typeset music produced in London, and his type was the only one of the period capable of seriously competing with the work of the engravers, who by then were increasingly occupying the field of music printing.