William Crotch (1775-1847) - Organ Concerto in A, No.2 (c.1805)
Performers: Andrew Lumsden (organ); Milton Keynes Chamber Orchestra; Hilary Davan Wetton (conductor)
Further info: William Crotch (1775-1847) - Symphony in F (1814)
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English composer, organist, theorist and painter. He was an exceptional
child prodigy and became one of the most distinguished English musicians
of his day. Crotch was the youngest son of Michael Crotch, a master
carpenter, and his wife Isabella. At the age of about 18 months he began
to pick out tunes on a small house organ which his father had built,
and soon after his second birthday he had taught himself to play God
Save the King with the bass. He played to a large company at Norwich in
February 1778, and that summer his mother began taking him on a series
of tours in which his phenomenal gifts were exploited. On 1 January 1779
he played to the king and queen at Buckingham Palace. He could
transpose into any key, and name all four notes in a chord by ear.
Burney described his abilities in a report to the Royal Society on 18
February 1779. He then toured the British Isles appearing several times
in Scotland. He could play the organ, piano and violin, had already
begun to compose, and was also talented in drawing and painting. On a
visit to Leicester he played to William Gardiner, who reported that he
could read Handel’s organ concertos at sight. In 1779 he made the
acquaintance of two other infant prodigies, Charles and Samuel Wesley,
who established that he could distinguish between mean-tone and natural
scales. Samuel Wesley and Crotch remained lifelong friends. From 1786 to
1788 he was at Cambridge, as assistant to Professor Randall. In
September 1790 Crotch was appointed organist of Christ Church, Oxford,
while still only 15 years old. From 1793 he began deputizing for the
professor of music, Philip Hayes, as the conductor of the Music Room
concerts, which he continued to direct until 1806. He took the degree of
BMus on 5 June 1794, and that of DMus on 21 November 1799.
In March 1797 he succeeded Hayes as professor of music and organist of
St John’s College and the university church of St Mary the Virgin. In
1806–7 he withdrew from Oxford, resigning his organistships, and settled
in London. In London he became well known as a teacher, composer and
scholar. His appearances as a soloist were infrequent but remarkable. He
sometimes played one of his organ concertos at a benefit concert. He
conducted the Birmingham Festival in 1808, and frequently directed
concerts of the Philharmonic Society in London, of which he had become
an associate on its foundation in 1813. Between 1812 and 1823 he gave
courses annually at the Surrey Institution and during the 1820s at the
Royal Institution and London Institution. On the establishment of the
Royal Academy of Music in 1822 Crotch was appointed its principal. He
resigned the principalship on 21 June 1832. In retirement he devoted
himself to sketching, composing and writing on all manner of subjects,
especially for the benefit of his young nephews, nieces and
grandchildren. He would sometimes visit his son, the Rev. W.R. Crotch,
who was master of the grammar school, Taunton; it was during one such
visit that he died. The evidence of Crotch’s precocity is incontestable,
being based in part on contemporary printed accounts in many sources,
including those of such qualified observers as Barrington and Burney.
The fact that Crotch’s ultimate achievement as a composer hardly lived
up to this promise may perhaps be put down to the psychological damage
he suffered as a child. Crotch himself later confessed: ‘I look back on
this part of my life with pain and humiliation … I was becoming a spoilt
child and in danger of becoming what too many of my musical brethren
have become under similar circumstances and unfortunately remained
through life’.
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