Bennett, William Sterndale (1816–1875)

English pianist and composer. He was a chorister at King's College, Cambridge, and a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He then went to Leipzig, Germany, where he made friends with Mendelssohn. Schumann dedicated his Études symphoniques for piano to him. He conducted the first English performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion in 1854. He was professor of music at Cambridge University 1856–75 and principal of the Royal Academy of Music 1866–75.

Works Orchestral six symphonies (1832–64); overtures The Naiads and The Wood-Nymphs; fantasy-overture on Moore's Paradise and the Peri; five piano concertos (1832–38).

Other cantata The May Queen (1858); incidental music to Sophocles' Ajax (1872); odes for the International Exhibition (Tennyson) and the Cambridge Installation of a Chancellor (Kingsley); anthems; piano pieces, songs.