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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the pressure of her parent’s heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the best-known UK musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s name was cloaked in the deep shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to make the world premiere recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and confident beats, her composition will provide music lovers valuable perspective into how this artist – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about legacies. One needs patience to acclimate, to see shapes as they really are, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to face the composer’s background for a while.

I earnestly desired her to be her father’s daughter. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be detected in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the titles of her family’s music to see how he viewed himself as not only a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition and also a voice of the Black diaspora.

This was where parent and child began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the excellence of his art rather than the his racial background.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – began embracing his heritage. Once the African American poet this literary figure came to London in 1897, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He adapted Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the next year used the poet’s words for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, especially with African Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority judged Samuel by the quality of his music rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in England where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker this influential figure and observed a range of talks, including on the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality including the scholar and this leader, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even discussed matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in 1904. In terms of his art, the scholar reflected, “he made his mark so high as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in the early 20th century, in his thirties. However, how would her father have reacted to his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Child of Celebrated Artist shows support to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, directed by benevolent residents of every background”. If Avril had been more attuned to her family’s principles, or raised in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about the policy. Yet her life had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a British passport,” she remarked, “and the officials failed to question me about my race.” Therefore, with her “fair” complexion (according to the magazine), she traveled among the Europeans, lifted by their praise for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, subtitled: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a confident pianist herself, she never played as the lead performer in her work. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era followed her lead.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. Once officials learned of her African heritage, she was forced to leave the nation. Her citizenship offered no defense, the British high commissioner urged her to go or face arrest. She came home, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her naivety was realized. “The lesson was a hard one,” she lamented. Increasing her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The narrative of identifying as British until you’re not – which recalls troops of color who fought on behalf of the English in the global conflict and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,