🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the burden of her parent’s reputation. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK artists of the early 20th century, the composer’s identity was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to make the first-ever recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, Avril’s work will offer music lovers valuable perspective into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – envisioned her world as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

Yet about shadows. It requires time to acclimate, to see shapes as they really are, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to confront the composer’s background for a while.

I had so wanted her to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, that held. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be heard in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the headings of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not just a champion of English Romanticism but a representative of the African diaspora.

This was where father and daughter began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the mastery of his art instead of the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his African roots. At the time the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the young musician was keen to meet him. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, notably for the Black community who felt shared pride as the majority assessed his work by the brilliance of his music as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Success did not reduce his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he attended the pioneering African conference in London where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, such as the oppression of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders like the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even discussed issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the US capital in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have made of his daughter’s decision to work in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to S African Bias,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “seems to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with this policy “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to run its course, guided by well-meaning residents of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her family’s principles, or born in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about the policy. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she floated among the Europeans, lifted by their praise for her renowned family member. She presented about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and conducted the national orchestra in that location, featuring the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, named: “In memory of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist herself, she never played as the soloist in her work. Instead, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “could introduce a change”. However, by that year, things fell apart. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she had to depart the nation. Her UK document offered no defense, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the magnitude of her innocence became clear. “The realization was a difficult one,” she lamented. Increasing her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The account of identifying as British until it’s challenged – which recalls African-descended soldiers who served for the British during the second world war and survived only to be denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,