🔗 Share this article

Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly felt the pressure of her family heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the prominent UK musicians of the 1900s, the composer’s identity was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to make the world premiere recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, her composition will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about the past. It can take a while to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I felt hesitant to confront the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the names of her father’s compositions to realize how he identified as both a champion of English Romanticism as well as a representative of the Black diaspora.

It was here that Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

White America assessed the composer by the mastery of his music instead of the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the prestigious music college, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – turned toward his background. At the time the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances into music and the following year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with African Americans who felt shared pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and saw a variety of discussions, including on the mistreatment of the Black community there. He remained an advocate until the end. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as this intellectual and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with the American leader while visiting to the White House in 1904. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. However, how would the composer have thought of his daughter’s decision to travel to this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to South African policy,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she was not in favor with apartheid “in principle” and it “should be allowed to run its course, guided by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. Had Avril been more attuned to her family’s principles, or from segregated America, she may have reconsidered about this system. Yet her life had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a UK passport,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as Jet put it), she moved within European circles, buoyed up by their admiration for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and directed the national orchestra in that location, programming the inspiring part of her concerto, named: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a accomplished player on her own, she did not perform as the lead performer in her piece. Rather, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “may foster a transformation”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. When government agents became aware of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the country. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience became clear. “The lesson was a painful one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from that nation.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these shadows, I perceived a known narrative. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the British during the global conflict and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,