Bennett's 1956 String Quartet was dedicated to Hugo Grunwald, who served as treasurer for many years of "The Bohemians," an organization dedicated to service of musicians who had fallen on hard times. The work is comprised of three movements, the second a loving tribute to Grunwald's long service to musicians. The editors note that the source manuscript was an ozalid, a mirror image that was held up to a light source to read the music.

A 1937 string quartet by a composer perhaps better known as arranger/orchestrator of some 300 Broadway and London productions, Water Music uses the folk tune Sailors' Hornpipe as a starting point. But, as the publisher points out, it "soon becomes a witty compendium of modernist techniques, though omitting 12-tone. Not very far into the piece, for example, Bennett puts each player in a different key. He fragments and reassembles the tune to dramatic effect well beyond what one would expect from an essentially trivial folk melody."