Joseph Bennett (critic)

Joseph Bennett (29 November 1831 – 12 June 1911) was an English music critic and librettist. After an early career as a schoolmaster and organist, he was engaged as a music critic by The Sunday Times in 1865. Within five years he was appointed chief music critic of The Daily Telegraph, a post he held from 1870 to 1906.

Among Bennett's other work was writing or adapting libretti for cantatas and other large-scale orchestral and choral works by British composers such as Arthur Sullivan, Frederic Cowen and Alexander Mackenzie.

Bennett was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. He attended the local church, and became a member of its choir, and joined a local musical society in whose orchestra he played the viola. When he reached the age of 18, his friends encouraged him to become a minister in the Congregational church, but after long consideration he decided that he could not accept all the doctrines of the church. He embarked instead on a career as a teacher, and studied for a year at a training college in London in 1853.

After spending the following year in Margate, where he taught at the local school and played the organ in the Baptist church, Bennett was invited to take charge of a school in Islington, north London. He remained there for three years, before moving in 1857 to the Weigh House Chapel in the City of London as precentor and schoolmaster. He soon resigned the precentorship, while retaining his teaching duties, to allow himself time to work as an organist at Westminster Chapel.

In addition to his work as a teacher and organist, Bennett conducted two choral societies in the London area. In 1865, one of the members of the choir he conducted at Blackheath recommended him to Henry Coleman, music critic of The Sunday Times, who was in need of a deputy. The position was at first unpaid, but he was soon taken on to the editorial staff of the paper, and within five years was also writing for six other publications including The Daily Telegraph and The Musical Standard.

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