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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the weight of her father’s heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known UK composers of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of history.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I contemplated these memories as I made arrangements to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. With its impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and confident beats, her composition will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how she – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. It requires time to adapt, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to separate fact from distortion, and I felt hesitant to confront the composer’s background for a while.

I deeply hoped her to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, she was. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be observed in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the names of her parent’s works to see how he identified as not only a flag bearer of British Romantic style and also a representative of the Black diaspora.

It was here that parent and child appeared to part ways.

American society judged Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

As a student at the prestigious music college, her father – the son of a African father and a white English mother – started to lean into his background. At the time the poet of color this literary figure arrived in England in 1897, the young musician was keen to meet him. He composed this literary work into music and the subsequent year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with the Black community who felt shared pride as American society judged Samuel by the quality of his music instead of the his race.

Principles and Actions

Success did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the Black American thinker this influential figure and witnessed a series of speeches, such as the subjugation of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate until the end. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights such as Du Bois and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on racial equality, and even discussed matters of race with the US President while visiting to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so high as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in that year, in his thirties. Yet how might the composer have reacted to his child’s choice to be in this country in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to apartheid system,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, directed by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more attuned to her family’s principles, or raised in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about this system. But life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a English document,” she remarked, “and the authorities never asked me about my background.” Thus, with her “light” skin (as Jet put it), 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 educational institution and directed the national orchestra in the city, including the inspiring part of her concerto, named: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she never played as the featured artist 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 “may foster a shift”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities discovered her Black ancestry, she had to depart the country. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or face arrest. She returned to England, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she expressed. Increasing her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these shadows, I perceived a recurring theme. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the British throughout the second world war and lived only to be denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,