SAMUEL WESLEY  

A nephew of the church reformer John Wesley and son Charles Wesley, Samuel Wesley inherited considerable musical ability from his parents. Born in Bristol in 1766, by the age of eight he had written his first oratorio, to the astonishment of the composer William Boyce, who visited the family.

In 1778, although his musical proclivities were controlled by his parents for what seemed his own good, a set of harpsichord sonatas by the boy was published as his Opus 1. In the same year the family had moved to London and Samuel and his elder brother, Charles, gave concerts.

Attracted to the Catholic church by the music rather than the doctrine, Samuel Wesley, from 1780 onwards, set a number of Latin texts. An accident in 1787 had a serious effect on his health and character and the influence of a nonconformist minister with unorthodox views on marriage persuaded him to leave the wife he had married in 1793, after only two years, and live with his housekeeper, who bore him more children, including Samuel Sebastian Wesley, who was to win even greater distinction as a composer of church music.

Often virtually destitute, Wesley nevertheless remained an influential figure among his friends and fellow-musicians, and did much to foster an interest in the music of Bach. His compositions, dominated by his Latin church music, include services and settings for the Anglican liturgy, secular vocal music, a number of organ volumntaries, with other keyboard works of a less substantial but more immediately profitable nature. Something of his skill as a composer is heard in his psalm chant, Quemadmodum, Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks.