William Sterndale Bennett
Sir William Sterndale Bennett was an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. At the age of ten Bennett was admitted to the London Royal Academy of Music, where he remained for ten years. By the age of twenty, he had begun to make a reputation as a concert pianist, and his compositions received high praise. Among those impressed by Bennett was the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, who invited him to Leipzig. There Bennett became friendly with Robert Schumann, who shared Mendelssohn's admiration for his compositions. Bennett spent three winters composing and performing in Leipzig.
In 1837 Bennett began to teach at the RAM, with which he was associated for most of the rest of his life. For twenty years he taught there, later also teaching at Queen's College, London. Among his pupils during this period were Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, and Tobias Matthay. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s he composed little, although he performed as a pianist and directed the Philharmonic Society for ten years. He also actively promoted concerts of chamber music. From 1848 onward, his career was punctuated by antagonism between himself and the conductor Michael Costa.
In 1858, Bennett returned to composition, but his later works, though popular, were considered old-fashioned and did not arouse as much critical enthusiasm as his youthful compositions had done. He was Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge from 1856 until 1875. In 1866 he became Principal of the RAM, rescuing it from closure, and remained in this position until his death. He was knighted in 1871. He died in London in 1875 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Bennett had a significant influence on English music, not solely as a composer but also as a teacher, as a promoter of standards of musical education and as an important figure in London concert life. In recent years, appreciation of Bennett's compositions has been rekindled and a number of his works, including a symphony, his piano concerti, some vocal music and many of his piano compositions, have been recorded. In his bicentenary year of 2016, several concerts of his music and other related events took place.
Biography
Early years
Bennett was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, the third child and only son of Robert Bennett, the organist of Sheffield parish church, and his wife Elizabeth, née Donn. In addition to his duties as an organist, Robert Bennett was a conductor, composer and piano teacher; he named his son after his friend William Sterndale, some of whose poems the elder Bennett had set to music. His mother died in 1818, aged 27, and his father, after remarrying, died in 1819. Thus orphaned at the age of three, Bennett was brought up in Cambridge by his paternal grandfather, John Bennett, from whom he received his first musical education.John Bennett was a professional bass, who sang as a lay clerk in the choirs of King's, St John's and Trinity colleges. The young Bennett entered the choir of King's College Chapel in February 1824 where he remained for two years. In 1826, at the age of ten, he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Music, which had been founded in 1822. The examiners were so impressed by the child's talent that they waived all fees for his tuition and board.
Bennett was a pupil at the RAM for the next ten years. At his grandfather's wish his principal instrumental studies were at first as a violinist, under Paolo Spagnoletti and later Antonio James Oury. He also studied the piano under W. H. Holmes, and after five years, with his grandfather's agreement, he took the piano as his principal study. He was a shy youth and was diffident about his skill in composition, which he studied under the principal of the RAM, William Crotch, and then under Cipriani Potter, who took over as principal in 1832. Among the friends Bennett made at the Academy was the future music critic J. W. Davison. Bennett did not study singing, but when the RAM mounted a student production of The Marriage of Figaro in 1830, Bennett, aged fourteen, was cast in the mezzo-soprano role of the page boy Cherubino. This was among the few failures of his career at the RAM. The Observer wryly commented, "of the page... we will not speak", but acknowledged that Bennett sang pleasingly and to the satisfaction of the audience. The Harmonicon, however, called his performance "in every way a blot on the piece".
Among Bennett's student compositions were a piano concerto, a symphony and an overture to The Tempest. The concerto received its public premiere at an orchestral concert in Cambridge on 28 November 1832, with Bennett as soloist. Performances soon followed in London and, by royal command, at Windsor Castle, where Bennett played in April 1833 for King William IV and Queen Adelaide. The RAM published the concerto at its own expense as a tribute. A further London performance was given in June 1833. The critic of The Harmonicon wrote of this concert:
he most complete and gratifying performance was that of young Bennett, whose composition would have conferred honour on any established master, and his execution of it was really surprising, not merely for its correctness and brilliancy, but for the feeling he manifested, which, if he proceed as he has begun, must in a few years place him very high in his profession.
In the audience was Felix Mendelssohn, who was sufficiently impressed to invite Bennett to the Lower Rhenish Music Festival in Düsseldorf. Bennett asked, "May I come to be your pupil?" Mendelssohn replied, "No, no. You must come to be my friend".
In 1834, Bennett was appointed organist of St Ann's, Wandsworth, London, a chapel of ease to Wandsworth parish church. He held the post for a year, after which he taught private students in central London and at schools in Edmonton and Hendon. Although by common consent the RAM had little more to teach him after his seventh or eighth year, he was permitted to remain as a free boarder there until 1836, which suited him well, as his income was small. In May 1835 Bennett made his first appearance at the Philharmonic Society of London, playing the premiere of his Second Piano Concerto, and in the following year he gave there the premiere of his Third Concerto. Bennett was also a member of the Society of British Musicians, founded in 1834 to promote specifically British musicians and compositions. Davison wrote in 1834 that Bennett's overture named for Lord Byron's Parisina was "the best thing that has been played at the Society's concerts".
Germany: Mendelssohn and Schumann (1836–42)
In May 1836, Bennett travelled to Düsseldorf in the company of Davison to attend the Lower Rhenish Music Festival for the first performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio St Paul. Bennett's visit was enabled by a subsidy by the piano-making firm of John Broadwood & Sons. Inspired by his journey up the Rhine, Bennett began work on his overture The Naiads. After Bennett left for home, Mendelssohn wrote to their mutual friend, the English organist and composer Thomas Attwood, "I think him the most promising young musician I know, not only in your country but also here, and I am convinced if he does not become a very great musician, it is not God's will, but his own".After Bennett's first visit to Germany there followed three extended visits to work in Leipzig. He was there from October 1836 to June 1837, during which time he made his debut at the Gewandhaus as the soloist in his Third Piano Concerto with Mendelssohn conducting. He later conducted his Naiads overture. During this visit he also arranged the first cricket match ever played in Germany,. At this time Bennett wrote to Davison:
took me to his house and gave me the printed score of 'Melusina', and afterwards we supped at the 'Hôtel de Bavière', where all the musical clique feed ... The party consist of Mendelssohn, David, Stamity ... and a Mr. Schumann, a musical editor, who expected to see me a fat man with large black whiskers.
Bennett had been at first slightly in awe of Mendelssohn, but no such formality ever attached to Bennett's friendship with Robert Schumann, with whom he went on long country walks by day and visited the local taverns by night. Each dedicated a large-scale piano work to the other: in August 1837 Schumann dedicated his Symphonic Studies to Bennett, who reciprocated the dedication a few weeks later with his Fantasie, Op. 16. Schumann was eloquently enthusiastic about Bennett's music; in 1837 he devoted an essay to Bennett in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, praising amongst other works Bennett's Op. 10 Musical Sketches for piano, "three of Bennett's loveliest pictures". The essay ends: "For some time now he has been peering over my shoulder, and for the second time he has asked 'But what are you writing?' Dear friend, I shall write no more than: 'If only you knew!'" Bennett however had from the outset some reservations about Schumann's music, which, he told Davison in 1837, he thought "rather too eccentric".
On Bennett's return to London he took up a teaching post at the RAM which he held until 1858. During his second long stay in Germany, from October 1838 to March 1839, he played his Fourth Piano Concerto and the Wood Nymphs Overture, Op. 20. Returning to England, he wrote to his Leipzig publisher Friedrich Kistner in 1840, bemoaning the difference between England and Germany :
You know what a dreadful place England is for music; and in London I have nobody who I can talk to about such things, all the people are mad with Thalberg and Strauss , and I have not heard a single Symphony or Overture in one concert since last June. I sincerely hope that Prince Albert ... will do something to improve our taste.
On Bennett's third trip, from January to March 1842, in which he also visited Kassel, Dresden and Berlin, he played his Caprice for piano and orchestra, Op. 22, in Leipzig. Despite his then-pessimistic view of music in England, Bennett missed his chance to establish himself in Germany. The musicologist Nicholas Temperley writes
One might guess that the early loss of both parents produced in Bennett an exceptionally intense need for reassurance and encouragement. England could not provide this for a native composer in his time. He found it temporarily in German musical circles; yet, when the opportunity came to claim his earned place as a leader in German music, he was not quite bold enough to grasp it.