According to the British musicologist Nicholas Temperley, Crotch was "a child prodigy without parallel in the history of music", and was certainly the most distinguished English musician in his day.

[2] At the age of two he became a local celebrity by performing for visitors, among them the musician Charles Burney, who wrote an account of his visits for the Royal Society.

[3] The three-year-old Crotch was taken to London by his ambitious mother, where he not only played on the organ of the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace, but performed for King George III.

As soon as he has finished a regular tune, or part of a tune, or played some little fancy notes of his own, he stops, and has some of the pranks of a wanton boy; some of the company then generally give him a cake, an apple, or an orange, to induce him to play again...[4]Crotch was later to observe that this experience led him to become a rather spoiled child, excessively indulged so that he would perform.

[1] Among his notable pupils were William Sterndale Bennett, Lucy Anderson, Stephen Codman, George Job Elvey, Cipriani Potter, and Charles Kensington Salaman.