Sterndale Bennett has often been characterized as an imitator of Mendelssohn. While it is true and unsurprising that there are similarities in the two composers’ musical language, actual imitation is difficult to substantiate. Bennett’s reputation as a composer has passed through several phases in the last 200 years. It was high in his lifetime in Germany as well as in Britain, when resemblance to Mendelssohn was counted as a positive asset, but later assailed by promoters of the ‘English Musical Renaissance’, who needed a preceding dark age and tended to dismiss early Victorians as copiers of Mendelssohn. Recent writers have shown a more positive attitude to the Victorian period in general. Bennett’s individuality has in fact been fully recognized from the first by such widely differing commentators as Mendelssohn himself, Robert Schumann, Henry Heathcote Statham, Frederick Ouseley, Charles Gounod, Charles Stanford, Geoffrey Bush, Peter Horton and Larry Todd. His style was founded on the Austro-German classical tradition and the London Pianoforte School headed by Clementi and Cramer, through his teacher Cipriani Potter, as is confirmed by early sources. This article surveys some of Bennett’s most characteristic piano pieces, and ends by analysing notably original features of his harmonic style that owe nothing to Mendelssohn, such as the inverted pedal note, evaded resolution of dissonance, and harmonic anticipation.

A concert pianist in his own right and a prodigious youth, Sterndale Bennett composed his five complete piano concertos at the beginning of his career. Although Mozart is often cited as a major influence on Bennett’s musical style, and Bennett was a keen executant of Mozart’s piano concertos throughout his career as a virtuoso (at a time when a performing tradition of Mozart’s concertos was still establishing itself), of equal or even greater impact on Bennett’s style of concerto was the ‘London School’ of pianists, among them Field, Hummel, Potter (Bennett’s teacher), Cramer and Moscheles whose first-movement structural paradigms of ritornello and sonata are especially evident in the corresponding movements of the first four of Bennett’s concertos. Structural and stylistic factors are also discussed in relation to the more romantically inclined slow movements (which includes an examination of the programmatic movement of the Third Concerto in C minor Op. 9, so enthusiastically reviewed by Schumann in Leipzig, and the unpublished ‘Adagio in G minor’) as well as the ‘shared sonata’ schemes of the finales in which the influence of Mendelssohn features more conspicuously. Finally, the stylistic amalgam of Bennett’s concertos, in particular the frequently performed Fourth Concerto in F minor Op. 19 and the unpublished Konzert-Stück in A minor, is considered within the larger context of the first half of the nineteenth century with particular reference to the tensions that existed between the composer’s classical instincts and the desire to experiment with freer Romantic forms.

The present article explores the travel diaries William Sterndale Bennett kept on his three extended journeys from London to Leipzig between 1836 and 1842. In the autumn of 1836 the young pianist and composer embarked on the first and longest of ultimately three residencies in Leipzig. Invited by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, he came to the burgeoning centre for instrumental music in order to spend productive time in the artistic circle surrounding Mendelssohn. Bennett began keeping a diary, in which he recorded his experiences – from mundane to musical – and which de facto evolved into a silent travel companion. He repeated this process on his subsequent two travels. The diaries offer valuable first-hand accounts of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts under Mendelssohn’s leadership (who served as its Kapellmeister from 1835 to 1847) as well as the semi-private soirées in the prestigious salons of the city. In the privacy of the personal journal, Bennett did not shy away from making bold statements concerning compositions, performance practices, the quality of musical instruments or socio-cultural idiosyncrasies. Especially intriguing is the congenial connection he made with Robert Schumann. The two artists shared an ad hoc, allusive affinity and community of solidarity that has been overlooked in the past. All of this is the more revealing in light of his otherwise soft-spoken and reserved personality, particularly since Bennett’s journaling also offers a view into his own compositional and creative process during this important phase of his career. Apart from tracing musical opinions expressed, aesthetic positions maintained and cultural differences observed, this article follows the artistic bond between William Sterndale and Robert Schumann.

Bennett wrote in a variety of instrumental and vocal genres. Some of his most popular pieces during his lifetime comprise anthems, oratorios and cantatas. But his enduring legacy resides with his instrumental output, in particular works that include a pianist. This article begins with an examination of performances that occurred in Britain and in Germany, where Bennett’s close associations with the Mendelssohn circle provided him with substantial encouragement during his formative years. Advances in transportation and increasing globalization led touring artists to travel farther to cities worldwide, bringing with them Bennett repertoire to foreign shores. George Loder, for example, conducted the US premiere of The Wood Nymphs overture at the New York Philharmonic in 1848. Arabella Goddard gave an early American performance of the Piano Sonata Op. 46 (Die Jungfrau von Orleans) in 1875, just two years after its premiere in London. In addition, émigrés from Britain and Germany, especially to Australia, New Zealand and America, contributed to the movement of British music across the globe. In both small towns and large cities, from Melbourne to Auckland, San Francisco to Boston, audiences heard Bennett compositions. In tracing performances of Bennett’s instrumental music before the First World War in both his own country and selected areas outside the British Isles, this research contributes to our understanding of developments in modern concert life as well as the transmission of British music within the Empire and beyond.

The career of the composer, pianist, teacher and conductor William Sterndale Bennett (1816–1875) provides an excellent example of how early musical promise by no means guarantees adult success. In Bennett’s case, enthusiastic, but not undeserved, endorsements from Mendelssohn and Schumann, combined with equally high expectations from his compatriots, proved to be more of a curse than a blessing and resulted in a crisis of confidence. Drawing on many contemporary sources, among them letters, reviews and personal reminiscences, this article investigates the way in which this began to afflict Bennett in his mid-twenties. It manifested itself in various ways: first, he found it increasingly difficult to finish compositions for publication; second, and as a result of this, his output shrank considerably between the early 1840s and the late 1850s; third, most of the works he did complete were on a smaller scale than the earlier ones; fourth, as he is known to have been working on a number of works at this time of which no trace survives, one can only presume that he destroyed them. The burden of expectation, negative criticism and a dread of producing substandard work all contributed to his loss of self-belief, which was also reflected in the observable decline in his ability as a conductor. Lastly, an attempt is made to unravel the curious inverse connection between Bennett’s creativity and his marriage, and possible connections between his fantasy overture Paradise and the Peri and Schumann’s cantata of the same name. In conclusion, it reflects on the emotional ties between Bennett and two of those particularly close to him, his wife and Schumann, and posits a tentative link between their deaths and his regaining of his compositional voice.