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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZBENNETT, William Sterndale(b 13 April 1816, Sheffield, Yorkshire; d 1 February 1875) Composer, pianist, conductor, educator. Orphaned at age 3, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music at age 10, so impressing the examiners that they gave him a full scholarship. He stayed there for 10 years. His student compositions were so highly thought of that Felix Mendelssohn invited him to Leipzig. There at barely 20 years old he also befriended 'a Mr. [Robert] Schumann, a musical editor, who expected to see me a fat man with large black whiskers.' During that visit he also arranged the first cricket match ever played in Germany, as befitting a Yorkshireman. Bennett was professor of music at the RAM, Cambridge, and other places; he came back to the RAM in 1866 to save it from bankruptcy and stayed there the rest of his life. He was offered the post of conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the world's oldest symphony orchestra, and was tempted, but would not leave his students. He wrote piano concerti, a symphony and much else, but education/administration took up too much of his time. He was knighted in 1871 for his services to English music. The editor of this encyclopedia, proud of himself for sorting out Robert Russell Bennett and Richard Rodney Bennett, who each had one foot in light music and one in classical, thought he would throw in another Bennett with three names; but unfortunately W. S. Bennett never wrote any hit songs, as far as we know. At 14 he sang the part of the page boy in a production of The Marriage of Figaro, but the Observer wrote 'of the page...we will not speak.' |