CROFT, Greene, Boyce, and Arne--the first a little older, the other
three a little younger than Handel--are the four most prominent
composers to be dealt with in this chapter; but there are several
others besides, to whose biographies a few words are due.

William Croft--or Crofts, as his name was also written--was
born in 1678; he was a chorister at the Chapel Royal under Blow,
whom in 1708 he succeeded in the posts of organist of Westminster
Abbey and master of the children and composer to the Chapel
Royal, of which he had previously been appointed organist--at
first jointly with Clarke, and after his death in sole charge. He
published many songs, besides instrumental music, overtures and
entr'actes for stage plays, and odes for occasions of public rejoicing;
but his fame is derived almost entirely from his music for the ser-
vices of the church. Most of his finest works are contained in a
collection he issued in 1724 under the title of Musica Sacra--the
earliest example of ecclesiastical music engraved in score on plates;
three years after its publication he died at Bath, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. The preface to Musica Sacra shows a very
attractive character; it is a modest and thoughtful expression of his
ideas on church music, and the quiet heartfelt homage to Purcell
shows a self-effacing generosity of spirit not too common with
musicians of Croft's age--indeed, contrasted with the ordinary
preface of either the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, it
reads, to an extent almost unique, like the work of an artist and a
gentleman.

Maurice Greene, the other great anthem-writer of the period, was
seventeen years Croft's junior, being born in 1695. In his boyhood a
chorister of St. Paul's Cathedral, he was at the age of twenty-three
elected its organist; and he subsequently combined this position,
after the pluralist fashion of the times, with those of organist and
composer to the Chapel Royal (in succession to Croft), professor
of music at Cambridge, and master of the King's music. In 1750 he
inherited from a cousin a country estate in Essex, and, though still
holding all his former offices, spent, it would appear, most of his
time in collecting material for the publication in score of a repre-
sentative selection of English church music--a project that was

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