Introduction

Biography

As a boy, Croft was a cho­ris­ter at the Cha­pel Royal. From 1700–12, he was or­gan­ist at St. Anne’s Church, So­ho, Lon­don. From 1704 on, he was, joint­ly, with Je­re­mi­ah Clarke, or­gan­ist of the Cha­pel Roy­al.

In 1708 he be­came Mas­ter of the Child­ren at Cha­pel Roy­al, and or­gan­ist at West­min­ster Ab­bey. In 1713 he re­ceived a Doc­tor of Mu­sic de­gree from Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

In 1726, the Aca­de­my of Vo­cal Mu­sic (lat­er the Aca­de­my of An­cient Mu­sic) was found­ed by 13 mu­si­cians, in­clud­ing Croft, Pe­pusch, Bo­non­ci­ni, and Ge­mi­ni­ani.

Croft was com­pos­er to Queen Anne and was rec­og­nized as the fore­most church mu­si­cian of his time. He al­so wrote in­stru­ment­al works (e.g., cem­ba­lo and so­na­tas for the flute).

Works

• Musicus Ap­pa­ra­tus, 1713 (pub­lished in 1715)
• Musica Sac­ra, 1724; the first edi­tion of ful­ly scored Eng­lish church mu­sic