🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the weight of her parent’s reputation. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent British artists of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of history.

The First Recording

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to produce the inaugural album of her 1936 piano concerto. Featuring impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, her composition will offer new listeners deep understanding into how this artist – a composer during war born in 1903 – envisioned her world as a artist with mixed heritage.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about the past. It requires time to adjust, to perceive forms as they really are, to tell reality from distortion, and I had been afraid to confront her history for a while.

I earnestly desired Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be heard in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the headings of her parent’s works to see how he identified as both a flag bearer of British Romantic style as well as a advocate of the Black diaspora.

This was where father and daughter began to differ.

White America assessed the composer by the excellence of his art instead of the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the renowned institution, Samuel – the child of a African father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his heritage. Once the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the young musician was keen to meet him. He set this literary work to music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, especially with African Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society evaluated the composer by the quality of his music as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not reduce his beliefs. In 1900, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, including on the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist until the end. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including Du Bois and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the presidential residence in 1904. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so high as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, aged 37. However, how would the composer have thought of his daughter’s decision to work in the African nation in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the right policy”, Avril told Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to work itself out, overseen by well-meaning residents of all races”. Were the composer more attuned to her father’s politics, or from the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about the policy. However, existence had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a English document,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as described), she moved within European circles, supported by their praise for her renowned family member. She presented about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the national orchestra in the city, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “may foster a shift”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. After authorities became aware of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the country. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the UK representative advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience became clear. “The lesson was a hard one,” she lamented. Adding to her humiliation was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English in the global conflict and survived only to be denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,