he duty of organist at several
chapels in Cambridge, whence he removed to Oxford, with a view to
entering the church; but he afterwards resumed the musical profession,
and was appointed organist of Christ Church, in 1790. In 1797, he became
professor of music in that university; and in 1799, obtained the degree
of doctor of music. On the establishment of the Royal Academy, in 1823,
he was nominated Principal of that institution, but retired from the
office before his death. Dr. Crotch's great work is the oratorio of
"Palestine," the poetry of which is the prize poem of Bishop Heber. He
was also the author of several anthems, and other pieces of sacred music.

His death occurred suddenly, at the dinner-table, on the 29th of
September, 1847, in the seventy-third year of his age, at the residence
of his son, the Rev. W. R. Crotch, Master of the Grammar School at
Taunton, where he had spent the later years of his life.

There are two points worthy of notice connected with the name and works
of this great man. The country has raised no monument in any of its
cathedrals or churches to his memory, and his greatest work, "Palestine,"
is an oratorio almost entirely neglected. May it not be possible for the
"Old City" that gave him birth to set an example to the rest of the
musical world, by attention to these facts?

Most of the leading minds whose zeal and energy directed the earlier
movements of the various musical societies in this district, are yet
among the living, and the natural dictates of refinement cause us to
shrink from any attempts at their biographies; it is, therefore, with the
deference due to real genius, which needs no praise, that we pass in
silence over the names of the most earnest promoters of the growth and
cultivation of music, especially as developed in the workings of the
Festival Committee, and its important adjunct, the Choral Society. The
names and fame of Sir George Smart and Mr. Edward Taylor, professor of
music at Gresham College, are already too much the property of the world
at large to be reckoned among those whose privacy might be invaded by
comment in these pages; but there are many more, who with them, may from
the centre of that magnificent hall, and the midst of the greatest
triumphs of music that have ever been achieved by its almost unrivalled
choruses and orchestra, feel that "for their monument we must look
around."

And now it might seem but just and right that among the lio