William Sterndale Bennett

Sir William Sterndale Bennett (1816-75) was the leading English composer of the mid-nineteenth century. His music was highly regarded by Mendelssohn and Schumann, and was at one time widely played in Germany. Interest in his music is growing in scholarly and performing circles, but most of his music remains obscure and unknown. This book presents a record of Bennett's total achievement for the first time and is intended for both the general reader and the scholar. Each entry in the Catalogue begins with a summary of the work's history, followed by detailed descriptions of all the authentic manuscript and printed sources with their locations, a list of important performances, references to the work in the composer's mostly unpublished diaries and correspondence, and a bibliography. An introduction sets the sources in their historical context, and there are appendices on Bennett's notebooks, the paper used in the autographs, the plate numbers in the printed music, and chronological and generic lists of all the works. Based on the author's extensive research in libraries, archives, and private collections in Britain and Germany, the catalogue is an important reference and source book for all those interested in British and nineteenth-century music.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.