🔗 Share this article

Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly felt the burden of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent British musicians of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s identity was cloaked in the long shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I reflected on these shadows as I got ready to make the inaugural album of her 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, this piece will grant audiences deep understanding into how she – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – imagined her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about the past. It can take a while to adjust, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to face her history for a period.

I had so wanted the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, that held. The idyllic English tones of her father’s impact can be heard in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the titles of her father’s compositions to realize how he identified as not only a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition but a voice of the Black diaspora.

This was where father and daughter seemed to diverge.

White America assessed the composer by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the renowned institution, the composer – the offspring of a African father and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his heritage. At the time the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the young musician was keen to meet him. He composed the poet’s African Romances to music and the next year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with the Black community who felt vicarious pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his music rather than the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition failed to diminish his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the pioneering African conference in London where he encountered the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, such as the oppression of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality such as the scholar and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even discussed issues of racism with the US President on a trip to the US capital in 1904. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so high as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in 1912, in his thirties. Yet how might Samuel have reacted to his child’s choice to travel to South Africa in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to S African Bias,” ran a headline in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she did not support with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to run its course, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her father’s politics, or raised in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a UK passport,” she said, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as Jet put it), she floated within European circles, buoyed up by their admiration for her late father. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the bold final section of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a confident pianist personally, she never played as the soloist in her piece. Rather, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “could introduce a change”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. Once officials became aware of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the country. Her UK document failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she expressed. Adding to her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

As I sat with these memories, I sensed a recurring theme. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – which recalls troops of color who fought on behalf of the UK during the global conflict and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,