🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always experienced the weight of her family reputation. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous English musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the deep shadows of history.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these legacies as I got ready to make the world premiere recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, her composition will offer new listeners valuable perspective into how the composer – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about legacies. It can take a while to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to face her history for a while.

I had so wanted Avril to be a reflection of her father. Partially, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in many of her works, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the titles of her family’s music to understand how he identified as both a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a representative of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

The United States judged Samuel by the excellence of his art as opposed to the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – began embracing his background. At the time the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt shared pride as the majority judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in London where he encountered the African American intellectual this influential figure and observed a variety of discussions, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist throughout his life. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders including the scholar and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the presidential residence in that year. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so notably as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. But what would her father have thought of his child’s choice to work in this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to run its course, guided by benevolent people of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more attuned to her family’s principles, or raised in Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about this system. But life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the officials did not inquire me about my background.” Thus, with her “light” skin (as described), she moved among the Europeans, lifted by their acclaim for her late father. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, programming the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a accomplished player personally, she avoided playing as the soloist in her concerto. Rather, she consistently conducted as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “could introduce a change”. However, by that year, things fell apart. After authorities learned of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the country. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or face arrest. She came home, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her innocence dawned. “The lesson was a hard one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these shadows, I felt a recurring theme. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – that brings to mind Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the English throughout the second world war and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,