William Smith Rockstro

ROCKSTRO, William Smith [formerly Rackstraw, William Smyth]. b. North Cheam, Surrey, 5 January 1823; d. Kensington, London, 2 July 1895. He studied with William Sterndale Bennett* before spending time in Germany at the Leipzig Conservatoire under Mendelssohn*, Hauptmann and Plaidy (1845-6). On returning to England he worked in London as a performer, teacher and composer, being well known primarily from his piano transcriptions, fantasies and drawing-room songs. Due to his own poor health and that of his mother, he moved to Torquay in the early 1860s and was organist and honorary precentor of All Saints’ Church, Babbacombe (1867-91). On his mother’s death in 1876 he became a Roman...