BENNETT, SIR WILLIAM STERNDALE 1875), English musical composer, was born at Sheffield on April 13, 1816. He entered the choir of King's college chapel in 1824, and there studied the pianoforte besides composition at the Royal Academy. It was during this time that he wrote several of his most appreciated works, in which may be traced influences of the contemporary movement of music in Germany, which country he frequently visited during the years 1836-42. At one of the Rhen ish musical festivals in Dusseldorf he made the acquaintance of Mendelssohn, and soon afterwards renewed it at Leipzig. Bennett was made musical professor at Cambridge in 1856, and was per manent conductor of the Philharmonic society from 1856 until 1866, when he became principal of the Royal Academy of Music. Among his best works may be mentioned his three sketches for pianoforte solo, The Lake, The Millstream and The Fountain, and his 3rd pianoforte concerto ; for the orchestra, his symphony in G minor, and his overture The Naiads; and for voices, his cantata The May Queen, written for the Leeds Festival in 1858. For the jubilee of the Philharmonic society he wrote the overture Paradise and the Peri (1862) ; his sacred cantata the Woman of Samaria (first performed 1867) also achieved popularity, as did his Maid of Orleans, a sonata based on Schiller's tragedy which he produced shortly before his death. He was knighted in 1871. He died on Feb. 15,