🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the weight of her father’s heritage. Being the child of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, one of the most famous UK musicians of the early 20th century, Avril’s identity was cloaked in the lingering obscurity of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these memories as I made arrangements to produce the first-ever recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, this piece will offer audiences valuable perspective into how she – a composer during war born in 1903 – envisioned her existence as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about legacies. It can take a while to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to confront the composer’s background for a period.

I had so wanted her to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, this was true. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be heard in many of her works, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the names of her father’s compositions to understand how he viewed himself as both a champion of UK romantic tradition as well as a voice of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child began to differ.

White America evaluated Samuel by the mastery of his compositions as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the renowned institution, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure visited the UK in 1897, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He adapted this literary work as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America assessed his work by the quality of his art rather than the his background.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Fame failed to diminish his activism. In 1900, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in London where he encountered the Black American thinker this influential figure and witnessed a series of speeches, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality like this intellectual and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even talked about matters of race with the American leader on a trip to the presidential residence in that year. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so prominently as a musician that it will endure.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, in his thirties. However, how would the composer have reacted to his child’s choice to be in this country in the 1950s?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she was not in favor with apartheid “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, overseen by good-intentioned people of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her father’s politics, or born in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about the policy. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a British passport,” she stated, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my race.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, buoyed up by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and conducted the national orchestra in that location, including the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Although a confident pianist personally, she did not perform as the lead performer in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

The composer aspired, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, things fell apart. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she could no longer stay the nation. Her UK document offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the extent of her inexperience dawned. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she expressed. Compounding her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The story of being British until you’re not – that brings to mind troops of color who served for the English throughout the global conflict and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,