🔗 Share this article

Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the weight of her family reputation. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK musicians of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I got ready to record the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will provide audiences deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about shadows. It requires time to acclimate, to perceive forms as they really are, to separate fact from distortion, and I felt hesitant to address her history for a period.

I had so wanted the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, she was. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be observed in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the headings of her family’s music to understand how he viewed himself as not only a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a representative of the Black diaspora.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

American society evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his art as opposed to the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his background. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in that era, the young musician was keen to meet him. He set the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, particularly among Black Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art rather than the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not reduce his activism. In 1900, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in England where he encountered the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and observed a series of speeches, such as the subjugation of the Black community there. He was a campaigner to his final days. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality such as the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with the US President on a trip to the White House in that year. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it will endure.” He succumbed in 1912, at 37 years old. But what would Samuel have made of his child’s choice to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to work itself out, directed by well-meaning residents of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in segregated America, she could have hesitated about the policy. However, existence had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as described), she traveled alongside white society, buoyed up by their admiration for her late father. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, including the bold final section of her composition, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a skilled pianist personally, she never played as the lead performer in her piece. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, things fell apart. Once officials learned of her African heritage, she had to depart the land. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She came home, embarrassed as the scale of her inexperience was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these legacies, I perceived a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – which recalls African-descended soldiers who defended the UK in the World War II and made it through but were denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,