Emerging from Darkness: Why Avril Coleridge-Taylor Warrants to Be Heard

This talented musician always felt the weight of her parent’s legacy. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent English composers of the early 20th century, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the deep shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

In recent months, I contemplated these memories as I got ready to make the first-ever recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, this piece will provide music lovers valuable perspective into how she – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – imagined her reality as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

However about the past. It can take a while to adapt, to see shapes as they actually appear, to separate fact from distortion, and I was reluctant to confront the composer’s background for a period.

I deeply hoped her to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, this was true. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the titles of her parent’s works to see how he identified as not only a flag bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the African heritage.

This was where father and daughter seemed to diverge.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – began embracing his heritage. Once the poet of color the renowned Dunbar came to London in 1897, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He set the poet’s African Romances to music and the next year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame failed to diminish his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist throughout his life. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders including Du Bois and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on equality for all, and even discussed issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt while visiting to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it will endure.” He passed away in 1912, at 37 years old. Yet how might the composer have made of his child’s choice to travel to South Africa in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to South African policy,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she was not in favor with the system “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of every background”. If Avril had been more in tune to her family’s principles, or raised in segregated America, she could have hesitated about this system. Yet her life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a UK passport,” she stated, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my race.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (as described), she traveled alongside white society, lifted by their praise for her renowned family member. She gave a talk about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and led the national orchestra in the city, including the bold final section of her concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a confident pianist herself, she never played as the soloist in her concerto. Rather, she always led as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the country. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience was realized. “The realization was a hard one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the printing that year of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these memories, I sensed a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – which recalls African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English in the second world war and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,