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Sterndale Bennett's Lost Piano Concerto Found

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rosemary Williamson
Rosemary Williamson*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Extract

I have as I before stated, not yet played this season in the great Concerts [at the Gewandhaus] because I preferred to wait until I was just leaving Leipzig, and had finished all my compositions for the Publisher, therefore on the 3rd. March I will if possible play a new Concerto which I have in hand.

THIS, in a letter to Mary Anne Wood dated 7 February 1842, is the earliest specific mention of Bennett's last piano concerto, which was never published and for many years was missing. Only a ‘tantalising fragment’ of a two-piano reduction made by the composer's son and biographer, J. R. Sterndale Bennett, was known to researchers. Autograph manuscripts of two versions of the work, and two sets of orchestral parts copied for different performances, have recently come to light during the present author's research on Bennett. The discovery enables a fresh assessment to be made of an ‘unpublished work of outstanding importance’ by a composer of relatively few large-scale pieces, composed at the end of his most creative period and when he was arguably at the height of his powers. It also presents the possibility of the concerto's performance and publication, 150 years after its conception. A summary of all the sources now known is given in Table 1.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 119 , Issue 1 , 1994 , pp. 115 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Royal Musical Association

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References

1 Letter written by Bennett during a stay in Leipzig to Mary Anne Wood, his future wife The emphasis ‘new Concerto‘ is Bennett's The letter is in the private collection of Barry Sterndale Bennett, Longparish, Hants, hereafter LO, vol VIII, 38 The LO collection of correspondence was arranged and the volume numbers assigned by William Sterndale Bennett's son James Robert Sterndale Bennett around the turn of the centuryGoogle Scholar

2 Bush, Geoffrey, ‘Sterndale Bennett and the Orchestra’, An Unsentimental Education and Other Musical Recollections (London, 1990), 66–72 (p 69)Google Scholar

3 The research project to compile a thematic catalogue of Bennett's works is funded by the Leverhulme Trust The manuscripts were found in the private collection of Bennett's descendant Thomas Odling, hereafter referred to as ODGoogle Scholar

4 Geoffrey Bush, introduction to Sterndale Bennett Piano and Chamber Music, Musica Britannica, 37 (London, 1972), xvGoogle Scholar

5 The main business of composition immediately followed the completion of his Suite de Pièces, op 24, described by Bush as one ‘of his four undoubted masterpieces for solo piano’ Ibid, xivGoogle Scholar

6 Modern edition by Nicholas Temperley, The London Pianoforte School, 1766–1860, 17–18 (New York, 1985)Google Scholar

7 James Robert Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett (Cambridge, 1907), 42Google Scholar

8 Including an arrangement for three female voices and piano by W Chalmers Masters with the words of Barry Cornwall's poem ‘To a Nightingale at Mid-day’ (London, 1860) and for organ by Charles Steggall (London, 1863)Google Scholar

9 British Library, Loan 48 13 1, ff 132–3 The other composition was probably the overture Marte du Bois, entitled with allusion to Miss Wood, and also referred to in a letter from Bennett to Mendelssohn of 9 October 1842 (Bodleian Library, GB XVI, 63) Bennett worried over the overture for two years before allowing it to be performed in December 1844 See J R Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett, 151, 163–4Google Scholar

10 LO VIII, 44Google Scholar

11 Bennett's diaries are also in LOGoogle Scholar

12 J R Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett, 127Google Scholar

13 Foster, Myles Birket, History of the Philharmonic Society of London, 1813–1912 (London, 1912), 173Google Scholar

14 The spelling and punctuation of the title is inconsistent in the usage of both Bennett and commentatorsGoogle Scholar

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17 See Bush, , ‘Sterndale Bennett and the Orchestra’, 67 The effect is very similar to that achieved in the ‘Serenade’ from the Chamber Trio, op 26, originally composed in 1839, which Bennett revised for publication in 1843.Google Scholar

18 The penultimate word ‘other’ is written over a cancelled phrase ‘last and fourth’ Washington, Library of Congress, ML95 B47 Recipient unknownGoogle Scholar

19 It received 50 performances in London between 1825 and 1850 Therese Marie Ellsworth, ‘The Piano Concerto in London Concert Life between 1801 and 1850’ (D Phil dissertation. University of Cincinnati, 1991), 308–11Google Scholar

20 At a concert directed by him at Crosby Hall, 10 April 1844, reviewed in Musical World, 19, no 15 (11 April 1844), 129Google Scholar

21 Advertised by Bennett's publisher Lamborn Cock, along with other piano works by Weber in Bennett's edition, in Frederick Westlake's edition of nos 30, 37 and 39 of J S Bach's Das wohltemperierte Klavier, published in 1878 (copy British Library, h 428) Also listed in the Puttick & Simpson auction sale catalogue of Lamborn Cock's copyrights, 26 January 1881, lot 274 However, no copy of any part of Bennett's edition of Weber's piano music has been found The ‘new and revised edition’ of Weber's piano works issued by Bennett's publishers Leader & Cock in the 1850s and 1860s (copy British Library, h 1336) and reprinted by Lamborn Cock (Royal College of Music Library, LX C 12) makes no mention of BennettGoogle Scholar

22 Musical World, 18, no 23 (8 June 1843), 195Google Scholar

23 Thomas Simpson Cooke (1782–1848), who had conducted a performance of Bennett's Third Concerto, op 9, at the Philharmonic Society on 25 April 1836 Foster, History, 139 Cooke occasionally led or conducted the Philharmonic Society concerts at this period A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed George Grove (London, 1877–89), i, 398Google Scholar

24 Musical Examiner, no 32 (10 June 1843), 229–32.Google Scholar

25 Henry Fothergill Chorley, the Athenaeum's chief music reviewer, was not an enthusiast of Bennett's music, despite the success of the cantata The May Queen (1858), with Chorley's libretto In 1868 Bennett wrote to the then editor, Hepworth Dixon, protesting against the criticisms made of his sacred cantata The Woman of Samaria and remarking that this was not the first occasion on which he had to complain about attacks made on him in the journal (LO XIII, 7)Google Scholar

26 Bennett was never an actual pupil of MendelssohnGoogle Scholar

27 No. 815 (10 June 1843), 556Google Scholar

28 J R Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett, 157Google Scholar

29 LO VIIB, 22Google Scholar

30 Musical World, 19, no. 25 (20 June 1844), 210Google Scholar

31 Date from an annotated lithographed copy of J R. Sterndale Bennett's manuscript ‘Chronology’ in LO.Google Scholar

32 Musical World, 19, no. 26 (27 June 1844), 217.Google Scholar

33 Musical Examiner, no 87 (29 June 1844), 652–3Google Scholar

34 Letter dated [16?] September 1844, LO VIIB, 25 The trio was published by Kistner in April 1845 The overture was Mane du BoisGoogle Scholar

35 Musical World, 19, no 43, 354 The actual advertisement is dated September 1844CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 The copyright deposit copies of the two works in the British Library both have the accession date 5 March 1846Google Scholar

37 Bennett also marked out a stave for the trombone in the Finale, but did not use itGoogle Scholar

38 Clear from the orchestral parts prepared for the occasionGoogle Scholar

39 Musical World, 23, no 23 (3 June 1848), 366Google Scholar

40 J R Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett, 29Google Scholar

41 In LOGoogle Scholar

42 Both the Cramer, Addison & Beale string parts and the complete set printed by Leader & Cock and Addison & Hollier are held in the Royal Academy of Music Orchestral LibraryGoogle Scholar

43 23, no 26 (24 June 1848), 406–7Google Scholar

44 No 1077(17 June 1848), 611.Google Scholar

45 J R Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett, 189–94 See also Gerald Norrie, Stanford, the Cambridge Jubilee and Tchaikovsky (Newton Abbot, 1980), 123–7, for an alternative explanation of Costa's vendetta against BennettGoogle Scholar

46 Bennett gave several more performances of his Fourth Piano Concerto, op 19, in the early 1850s, but after 1853 never played any of his own concertos in public The opp 9 and 19 concertos were taken up by other pianists, particularly Arabella Goddard, who gave many performances of them in London and the provinces from the mid-1850s onwards. Details will be given in the author's forthcoming William Sterndale Bennett A Thematic CatalogueGoogle Scholar

47 J R Sterndale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett, 195Google Scholar

48 Letter dated 27 August 1848 in Sheffield Archives, M D 6318Google Scholar

49 J R Stemdale Bennett, The Life of William Sterndale Bennett, 151Google Scholar

50 A similar problem exists in the case of the unpublished F minor Concerto, particularly in the Finale, where there are several passages which require reconstruction Editions have been prepared by Geoffrey Bush for the recording by Malcolm Binns (Lyrita SRCD 205), a copy of which is in the BBC Music Library, and by Martin Outhwaite, ‘The Unpublished Concerto for Pianoforte and Orchestra in F Minor by William Sterndale Bennett (1816–1875)‘(M Mus dissertation, University of Reading, 1990)Google Scholar

51 In particular the autograph of K 537, in the Heineman Foundation, New York, which lacks the left-hand part of a large portion of the outer movements and the entire second movementGoogle Scholar