Samuel Wesley

Samuel Wesley (24 February 1766 – 11 October 1837) was an English organist and composer in the late Georgian period. Wesley was a contemporary of Mozart (1756–1791) and was called by some "the English Mozart".

Born in Bristol, he was the son of noted Methodist and hymn-writer Charles Wesley, the grandson of Samuel Wesley (a poet of the late Stuart period) and the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church.

His early musical education mostly took place in the family home in Bristol, where Sarah Wesley, his mother, sang and played the harpsichord. Hymn tunes and the works of Handel were the family's favourite pieces. Samuel also had lessons from David Williams, the organist of All Saints' Church, Bristol. In 1771 his father acquired a second house, in Chesterfield Street, Marylebone, London. Samuel left Bristol for the house in London by 1778.

Samuel informed his mother of his philosophical conviction that his marriage had been constituted by sexual intercourse, precluding any civil or religious ceremony, but after a scandalous delay he married Charlotte Louise Martin in 1793, and they had three children. This marriage broke up with Charlotte's discovery of Samuel's affair with the teenaged domestic servant Sarah Suter. Samuel and Sarah never married but had four children together, among them Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810–1876) who was a cathedral organist and notable composer.

In 1784, Wesley privately converted to Roman Catholicism, to the dismay of his uncle John Wesley. His hymn-writer father expressed his opinion in the following words:

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