🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the pressure of her family heritage. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent British artists of the 1900s, the composer’s reputation was cloaked in the long shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, this piece will offer new listeners deep understanding into how the composer – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her world as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

Yet about legacies. It can take a while to acclimate, to perceive forms as they truly exist, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the headings of her father’s compositions to realize how he heard himself as not only a standard-bearer of British Romantic style but a representative of the African diaspora.

At this point parent and child began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art instead of the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the renowned institution, Samuel – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – began embracing his heritage. At the time the African American poet this literary figure arrived in England in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He set the poet’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, particularly among Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his music as opposed to the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, including on the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality including this intellectual and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even talked about issues of racism with the US President on a trip to the presidential residence in that year. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so high as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, in his thirties. But what would Samuel have thought of his child’s choice to work in this country in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by good-intentioned South Africans of all races”. If Avril had been more in tune to her parent’s beliefs, or from Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. But life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a British passport,” she said, “and the government agents never asked me about my race.” Thus, with her “fair” appearance (according to the magazine), she moved within European circles, supported by their acclaim for her late father. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in that location, featuring the inspiring part of her composition, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the featured artist in her piece. Instead, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. Once officials became aware of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her UK document offered no defense, the UK representative recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She came home, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience became clear. “The realization was a painful one,” she expressed. Adding to her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these memories, I felt a familiar story. The narrative of being British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who served for the English during the World War II and lived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,