 He was married at Thornham Parva, Suffolk, on 19 December 1972 to violinist Nina Esmé Martin.He died, as a result of a heart attack, on 29 May 2015 in Sheffield.While at Royal Academy, Cropper formed the Cropper Quartet with Michael Adamson, Roger Bigley and Bernard Gregor-Smith, then when they moved to University of Keele, they renamed themselves the Lindsay Quartet after Alexander Lindsay.