Bennet - Voluntary 3 in G-Major

John Bennett (c. 1735 – London, September 1784) was an English organist and composer.

Details of Bennett's life are limited, but it is known that he died in September 1784, after serving as organist at St. Dionis Backchuch Fenchurch in London, for over thirty years. He had been a pupil of Johann Christoph Pepusch.

As the typical versatile eighteenth-century English musician, he played the organ and the viola, taught the harpsichord, and performed at Drury Lane Theatre as a singer in the chorus and as a dancer.

According to Thomas Mortimer's The Universal Director (1763), he lived at Queen-square Bloomsbury, and succeededCharles Burney as organist at St. Dionis-Backchurch, Fenchurch Street (demolished in 1878), in 1752.

The Ten Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord are his only works known to this day; they were published by the composer in 1758.

This third Voluntary is a really excellent piece, full of nice harmonics with a cornet section alternated with the echo cornet and concluded with a kind of reprise of the introductory adagio.

It sounds great on Arlesheim, where an echo cornet can be drawn on the 3rd manual.