Charles Wesley junior (11 December 1757 in Bristol – 23 May 1834 in London) was an English

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

ist and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. He was the son of

Sarah Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a piou ...

and Charles Wesley (the great hymn-writer and one of the founders of Methodism), and the brother of Samuel Wesley, also an organist and composer. He is usually referred to as "Charles Wesley junior" to avoid confusion with his more famous father. He married

Eliza Skelton ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to demonstrate the superficiality of communication between humans and machines ...

and had at least two children. Although Charles Wesley junior is much less well known than his brother Samuel Wesley, he was like Samuel regarded as a musical prodigy in childhood, and he was playing the organ before the age of three. He became a professional musician in adulthood, and Matthews (1971) quotes the '' European Magazine'' of 1784 as reporting that "his performance on the organ has given supreme delight". However he did not enjoy public performance, and worked mainly as a private organist, at one time to the Prince Regent; he was connected with the royal family through much of his life, having first played at the Queen's House at the age of 18. A handful of his compositions are still played, and a keyboard

sonata Sonata (; Italian: , pl. ''sonate''; from Latin and Italian: ''sonare'' rchaic Italian; replaced in the modern language by ''suonare'' "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece ''played'' as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian ''cant ...

in F minor was recently discovered and received its first performance on 1 February 2007 at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, as part of Methodist celebration of a year that is both the 300th anniversary of Charles Wesley's birth and the 250th anniversary of Charles Wesley junior's.

References

External links

*
United Methodist Reporter article
noting the first performance of a newly discovered work by Charles Wesley junior * English composers Musicians from Bristol 1757 births 1834 deaths Charles 02 18th-century British male musicians 18th-century British composers 19th-century British composers 19th-century British male musicians {{UK-composer-stub