🔗 Share this article

Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually felt the pressure of her parent’s legacy. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous English musicians of the 1900s, the composer’s identity was cloaked in the deep shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I sat with these legacies as I made arrangements to produce the world premiere recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will provide audiences deep understanding into how this artist – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her reality as a artist with mixed heritage.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about legacies. It requires time to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to confront her history for a while.

I earnestly desired the composer to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the names of her father’s compositions to understand how he identified as not just a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the African diaspora.

This was where father and daughter appeared to part ways.

The United States judged Samuel by the mastery of his music as opposed to the his racial background.

Family Background

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – started to lean into his background. At the time the poet of color this literary figure came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with African Americans who felt shared pride as white America judged Samuel by the quality of his compositions as opposed to the his background.

Principles and Actions

Recognition did not reduce his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he met the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was an activist to his final days. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders such as Du Bois and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He passed away in that year, at 37 years old. However, how would the composer have thought of his offspring’s move to travel to the African nation in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with the system “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, directed by good-intentioned residents of every background”. If Avril had been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or from Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about apartheid. But life had protected her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a UK passport,” she said, “and the officials failed to question me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she traveled within European circles, supported by their admiration for her late father. She presented about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in that location, programming the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, named: “In memory of my Father.” Although a skilled pianist on her own, she never played as the featured artist in her work. Rather, she consistently conducted as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. After authorities discovered her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her UK document offered no defense, the UK representative advised her to leave or be jailed. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her inexperience dawned. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Increasing her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the British in the global conflict and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,