🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the weight of her father’s heritage. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the most famous UK artists of the early 20th century, her name was enveloped in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of Avril’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring emotional harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, her composition will grant music lovers fascinating insight into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – envisioned her world as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about the past. One needs patience to acclimate, to see shapes as they truly exist, to tell reality from distortion, and I had been afraid to confront the composer’s background for a period.

I had so wanted her to be following in her father’s footsteps. To some extent, this was true. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be observed in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the names of her family’s music to realize how he identified as not only a champion of English Romanticism as well as a voice of the African heritage.

This was where father and daughter began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – began embracing his background. When the African American poet the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in that era, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He adapted this literary work as a composition and the next year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt vicarious pride as the majority assessed his work by the excellence of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Fame failed to diminish his activism. During that period, he was present at the pioneering African conference in London where he met the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, such as the subjugation of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders such as Du Bois and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even talked about racial problems with the American leader on a trip to the White House in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so high as a musician that it will endure.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, aged 37. However, how would the composer have thought of his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the correct approach”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Had Avril been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in segregated America, she may have reconsidered about this system. Yet her life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the officials did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (according to the magazine), she floated within European circles, buoyed up by their praise for her deceased parent. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and directed the broadcasting ensemble in the city, including the inspiring part of her concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a confident pianist personally, she never played as the soloist in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

She desired, as she stated, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials learned of her African heritage, she had to depart the land. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the scale of her inexperience was realized. “The realization was a painful one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these legacies, I felt a recurring theme. The account of being British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English in the second world war and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,