🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the pressure of her parent’s heritage. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK composers of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was shrouded in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these legacies as I prepared to record the inaugural album of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will grant music lovers deep understanding into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her reality as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about legacies. It can take a while to adjust, to see shapes as they really are, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to face her history for some time.

I earnestly desired Avril to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, this was true. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be heard in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the names of her father’s compositions to understand how he heard himself as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the African diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril began to differ.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the child of a African father and a white English mother – turned toward his African roots. Once the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in that era, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He set this literary work into music and the following year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with Black Americans who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the quality of his art rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper Samuel’s politics. During that period, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was an activist to his final days. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights like the scholar and this leader, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even discussed matters of race with the US President while visiting to the US capital in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so high as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have thought of his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the appropriate course”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she backtracked: she did not support with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, directed by benevolent South Africans of every background”. Had Avril been more in tune to her family’s principles, or born in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. Yet her life had shielded her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the officials never asked me about my race.” Therefore, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she floated among the Europeans, buoyed up by their acclaim for her late father. She presented about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in that location, featuring the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a accomplished player personally, she never played as the featured artist in her concerto. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the leader; 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, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents became aware of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, embarrassed as the extent of her innocence was realized. “This experience was a hard one,” she stated. Increasing her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The story of identifying as British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the English in the global conflict and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Including those from Windrush,