William Crotch (5 July 177529 December 1847) was an English composer and organist. According to the American musicologist Nicholas Temperley, Crotch was "a child prodigy without parallel in the history of music", and was certainly the most distinguished English musician in his day. Life Childhood William Crotch was born in Norwich, Norfolk, to a master carpenter. Like Mozart, he was a child prodigy, playing the organ his father had built. At the age of two he became a local celebrity by performing for visitors, among them the musician Charles Burney, who wrote an account of his visits for the Royal Society. The three--year-old Crotch was taken to London by his ambitious mother, where he not only played on the organ of the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace, but performed for King George III. The London Magazine of April 1779 recorded: He appears to be fondest of solemn tunes and church musick, particularly the 104th Psalm. As soon as he has finished a regular tune, or part of a tune, or played some little fancy notes of his own, he stops, and has some of the pranks of a wanton boy; some of the company then generally give him a cake, an apple, or an orange, to induce him to play again... Crotch was later to observe that this experience led him to become a rather spoiled child, excessively indulged so that he would perform. Adult life Crotch was for a time organist at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he was later to graduate with a Bachelor of Music degree. His first attempt at an oratorio, The Captivity of Judah, was played at Trinity Hall, Cambridge on 4 June 1789 when he was 14. His most successful—and largest scale—composition was the oratorio Palestine (1812), after which he mainly returned to smaller scale works. He may have composed the Westminster Chimes in 1793, which are played by Big Ben each time it strikes the hour. In 1797, Crotch became Heather Professor of Music at Oxford University, and in 1799 he acquired a doctorate in music. While at Oxford, he became acquainted with the musician and artist John Malchair, and took up sketching. He followed Malchair's style in recording the exact time and date of each of his pictures, and when he met the artist John Constable in London in 1805, he passed the habit along to the more famous artist. In