Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/B/Bennett, William Sterndale

Bennett, William Sterndale. One of the most admired of the English composers now living, whose style, however, is so completely imbued with the peculiarities of Mendelssohn, of whom he was a favorite and devoted pupil, that it can scarcely be called original. He was born in 1816. His early orchestral compositions and songs (quite in the manner of German Lie-der) were hailed as evincing most rare promise. His romantic overtures, called "The Naiads," and "The Wood Nymph," are still favorites in the concert room, and are remarkable for a certain vein of delicate and fairy-like imagination, and for their great resemblance to the overtures of Mendelssohn, of which, however, they are but pale and feeble copies. We do not hear of any works of magnitude produced by this writer since these early efforts.