John Stafford Smith was an English composer born in Gloucester, church organist, and early musicologist. He was one of the first serious collectors of manuscripts of works by Johann Sebastian Bach. He is best known for writing the music for "To Anacreon in Heaven". This song was written in the mid-1760s, when Smith was a teenager, and with words by Ralph Tomlinson it was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, a group of amateur musicians in London. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for John Stafford Smith. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stafford_Smith
