🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the weight of her parent’s heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous English composers of the early 20th century, her name was enveloped in the long shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to make the inaugural album of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and confident beats, this piece will grant audiences deep understanding into how she – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her existence as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. It can take a while to adjust, to perceive forms as they really are, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to face the composer’s background for a while.

I earnestly desired the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, that held. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be observed in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the headings of her parent’s works to understand how he viewed himself as not only a champion of UK romantic tradition as well as a representative of the Black diaspora.

This was where parent and child began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the poet of color the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the young musician was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the next year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the quality of his compositions rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not temper Samuel’s politics. During that period, he attended the First Pan African Conference in London where he encountered the Black American thinker this influential figure and saw a series of speeches, covering the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate to his final days. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders such as the scholar and this leader, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even talked about issues of racism with the American leader while visiting to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so prominently as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in the early 20th century, aged 37. Yet how might her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to the African nation in the 1950s?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by good-intentioned people of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her father’s politics, or from segregated America, she could have hesitated about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she stated, “and the authorities never asked me about my background.” Thus, with her “light” complexion (according to the magazine), she floated among the Europeans, lifted by their admiration for her deceased parent. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, including the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a accomplished player personally, she did not perform as the featured artist in her work. Rather, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, things fell apart. After authorities discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the country. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or be jailed. She came home, feeling great shame as the extent of her innocence 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 the country.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these memories, I felt a recurring theme. The story of being British until it’s revoked – which recalls Black soldiers who defended the English in the World War II and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,