As the son of one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Music, Ouseley had an excellent education including his matriculation and graduation from St. Michael's College. Later he became a professor at Oxford where he made music and musicology a serious subject of study. Ouseley's primary musical legacy was his establishment of the College of St. Michael and All Angels, Tenbury. When he was a young composer, that is as a child, he had the ability of Mozart and surpassed him in imagination and originality; later, however, he dismissed all secular influences on his music, becoming stilted by convention and sanctimonious sacrality. Early compositions included operas, orchestral pieces and string quartets but the mature compositions lack the vitality of his early works. Ouseley was a lifelong collector of music and bequeathed his library of three thousand volumes to St. Michael's. ~ Keith Johnson, All Music Guide