Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

This article is about the late 19th-century British composer. For the early 19th-century English poet, see Samuel Taylor Coleridge. For the 20th-century American composer, see Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in 1905
Born Samuel Coleridge Taylor
(1875-08-15)15 August 1875
Holborn, London, England
Died 1 September 1912(1912-09-01) (aged 37)
Croydon, Surrey, England
Occupation Classical composer and musician
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor c.1893

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was an English composer of part Creole descent who achieved such success that he was once called the "African Mahler".[1]

Early life and education

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 in Holborn, London, to Alice Hare Martin (1856–1953),[2] an English woman, and Dr. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, a Creole from Sierra Leone, of mixed European and African descent. They were not married, Alice Hare Martin herself being an illegitimate child.[3] Daniel Taylor returned to Africa by February 1875 and did not know that he had a son born in London. Alice Martin named her son Samuel Coleridge Taylor[4] after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge[4] and his mother and grandfather called the boy Coleridge Taylor.[5]

Taylor was brought up in Croydon, Surrey by his mother and her father Benjamin Holmans. Martin's brother was a professional musician. Taylor studied the violin at the Royal College of Music and composition under Charles Villiers Stanford. He also taught, soon being appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music; and conducted the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire.

The young man later used the name "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor", with a hyphen, said to be following a printer's typographical error.[6] His father Daniel Taylor was later appointed as coroner for the British Empire in the Gambia in the late 1890s.

Marriage and family

In 1899 Coleridge-Taylor married Jessie Walmisley, whom he had met as a fellow student at the RCM. Jessie had left the college in 1893. Her parents objected to the marriage because Taylor was of mixed-race parentage, but relented and attended the wedding. The couple had a son, named Hiawatha (1900–1980) after a Native American immortalised in poetry, and a daughter Gwendolyn (1903–1998). Later their daughter took the name Avril and became a conductor-composer in her own right.

Career

By 1896, Coleridge-Taylor was already earning a reputation as a composer. He was later helped by Edward Elgar, who recommended him to the Three Choirs Festival. His Ballade in A minor was premiered there. His early work was also guided by the influential music editor and critic August Jaeger of music publisher Novello; he told Elgar that Taylor was "a genius".

On the strength of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, which was conducted by Stanford at its 1898 premiere and proved to be highly popular, Coleridge-Taylor made three tours of the United States.[7] He became increasingly interested in his paternal racial heritage (he was the youngest delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference held in London),[7] as his father was descended from African-American slaves freed by the British after the American Revolutionary War; the Black Loyalists were resettled in Nova Scotia, and then 1200 moved to Sierra Leone in 1792, establishing the colony of Freetown. At one stage Coleridge-Taylor seriously considered emigrating to the US.

In 1904, he was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, a rare event in those days for a man of African descent. Coleridge-Taylor sought to do for traditional African music what Johannes Brahms did for Hungarian music and Antonín Dvořák for Bohemian music. Having met the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in London, Taylor set some of his poems to music. A joint recital between Taylor and Dunbar was arranged in London, under the patronage of US Ambassador John Milton Hay. It was organised by Henry Francis Downing, an African-American playwright and London resident.[8] Dunbar and other black people encouraged Coleridge-Taylor to draw from his Sierra Leonean ancestry and the music of the African continent.

Due to his success, Coleridge-Taylor was invited to be one of the judges at music festivals. He was said to be personally shy but was effective as a conductor as well.

Composers were not handsomely paid for their music, and they often sold the rights to works outright to make immediate income. This caused them to lose the royalties earned by the publishers who had invested in the music distribution through publication. The popular Hiawatha's Wedding Feast sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but Coleridge-Taylor had already sold the music outright for the sum of 15 guineas, so did not benefit directly.[9][10][11] He learnt to retain his rights and earned royalties for other compositions after achieving wide renown.

Coleridge-Taylor was 37 when he died of pneumonia, and his death is often attributed to the stress of his financial situation.[12] He was buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery, Wallington, Surrey (today in the London Borough of Sutton).

Legacy and honours

Too young to die
his great simplicity
his happy courage
in an alien world
his gentleness
made all that knew him
love him.[1]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Crisis was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Coleridge-Taylor's work continued to be popular. He was later championed by conductor Malcolm Sargent. Between 1928 and 1939, he conducted ten seasons of a costumed ballet version of The Song of Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall, performed by the Royal Choral Society (600 to 800 singers) and 200 dancers.

Legacy

A blue plaque in South Norwood
Blue plaque in Croydon on the house in which Coleridge-Taylor died

Coleridge-Taylor's greatest success was undoubtedly his cantata Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, which was widely performed by choral groups in England during Coleridge-Taylor's lifetime and in the decades after his death. Its popularity was rivalled only by the choral standards Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah.[15] The composer soon followed Hiawatha's Wedding Feast with two other cantatas about Hiawatha, The Death of Minnehaha and Hiawatha's Departure; all three were published together, along with an Overture, as The Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30. The tremendously popular Hiawatha seasons at the Royal Albert Hall, which continued till 1939, were conducted by Sargent and involved hundreds of choristers, and scenery covering the organ loft. Hiawatha's Wedding Feast is still occasionally revived.

Coleridge-Taylor also composed chamber music, anthems, and the African Dances for violin, among other works. The Petite Suite de Concert is still regularly played. He set one poem by his near-namesake Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Legend of Kubla Khan.

Coleridge-Taylor was greatly admired by African Americans; in 1901, a 200-voice African-American chorus was founded in Washington, D.C., named the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society. He visited the USA three times, receiving great acclaim, and earned the title "the African Mahler" from the white orchestral musicians in New York in 1910.[1] There are schools named after him in Louisville, Kentucky and Baltimore, Maryland: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elementary School

Coleridge-Taylor composed a violin concerto for the American violinist Maud Powell, the American performance of which was subject to rewriting because the parts were lost en route – not, as legend has it, on the RMS Titanic but on another ship. The concerto has been recorded by Philippe Graffin and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra under Michael Hankinson (nominated "Editor's Choice" in Gramophone magazine), Anthony Marwood and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins (on Hyperion Records) and Lorraine McAslan and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite (on the Lyrita label). It was also performed at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre in the autumn of 1998 by John McLaughlin Williams and William Thomas as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of the composition of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast.

Lists of Coleridge-Taylor's compositions and recordings of his work and of the many articles, papers and books about Coleridge-Taylor's life and legacy are available through the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation and the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Network.[16]

There are two blue plaques in his memory, one in Dagnall Park, South Norwood,[17] and the other in St Leonards Road, Croydon, at the house where he died. A metal figure in the likeness of Coleridge-Taylor has been installed in Charles Street, Croydon.[18]

Posthumous publishing

A 1912 obituary in the African Methodist Episcopal Church Review

In 1999, freelance music editor Patrick Meadows identified three important chamber works by Coleridge-Taylor that had never been printed or made widely available to musicians. A handwritten performing parts edition of the Piano Quintet, from the original in the Royal College of Music (RCM) Library, had been prepared earlier by violinist Martin Anthony Burrage of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The first modern performance of the Piano Quintet was given on 7 November 2001 by Burrage's chamber music group, Ensemble Liverpool / Live-A-Music in Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. The lunchtime recital included the Fantasiestücke. Live recordings of this performance are lodged with the RCM and the British Library.[19] The artists were Andrew Berridge (violin), Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage (violin), Joanna Lacey (viola), Michael Parrott (cello) and John Peace (piano).

After receiving copies of the work from the RCM in London, Patrick Meadows made printed playing editions of the Nonet, Piano Quintet, and Piano Trio. The works were performed in Meadows's regular chamber music festival on the island of Majorca, and were well received by the public as well as the performers. The first modern performances of some of these works were done in the early 1990s by the Boston, Massachusetts-based Coleridge Ensemble, led by William Thomas of Phillips Academy, Andover. This group subsequently made world premiere recordings of the Nonet, Fantasiestücke for string quartet and Six Negro Folksongs for piano trio, which were released in 1998 by Afka Records. Thomas, a champion of lost works by black composers, also revived Coleridge's Hiawatha's Wedding Feast in a performance commemorating the composition's 100th anniversary with the Cambridge Community Chorus at Harvard's Sanders Theatre in the spring of 1998.[20]

The Nash Ensemble's recording of the Piano Quintet was released in 2007.

In 2006, Meadows finished engraving the first edition of Coleridge-Taylor's Symphony in A minor. Meadows has also transcribed from the RCM manuscript the Haytian Dances, a work virtually identical to the Noveletten but with a fifth movement inserted by Coleridge-Taylor, based on the Scherzo of the symphony. This work is for string orchestra, tambourine, and triangle.

Thelma, the missing opera

Coleridge-Taylor's only large-scale operatic work, Thelma, was long believed to have been lost; as recently as 1995, Geoffrey Self in his biography of Coleridge-Taylor, The Hiawatha Man, stated that the manuscript of Thelma had not been located, and that the piece may have been destroyed by its creator. While researching for a PhD on the life and music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Catherine Carr unearthed the manuscripts of Thelma in the British Library. She assembled a libretto and catalogued the opera in her thesis, presenting a first critical examination of the work by a thorough investigation of the discovered manuscripts (including copious typeset examples).[21] The work subsequently appeared as such on the catalogue of the British Library.

Thelma is a saga of deceit, magic, retribution and the triumph of love over wickedness. The composer has followed Richard Wagner's manner in eschewing the established "numbers" opera format, preferring to blend recitative, aria and ensemble into a seamless whole. It is possible that he had read Marie Corelli's 1887 "Nordic" novel Thelma (it appears that the name "Thelma" may have been created by Corelli for her heroine). Coleridge-Taylor composed Thelma between 1907 and 1909; it is alternatively entitled The Amulet.

The full score and vocal score in the British Library are both in the composer's hand – the full score is unbound but complete (save that the vocal parts do not have the words after the first few folios) but the vocal score is bound (in three volumes) and complete with words. Patrick Meadows and Lionel Harrison have prepared a type-set full score, vocal score and libretto (the librettist is uncredited and may be Coleridge-Taylor himself). As to the heroine of the title, the composer changed her name to "Freda" in both full and vocal scores (although in the full score he occasionally forgets himself and writes "Thelma" instead of "Freda"). Perhaps Coleridge-Taylor changed the name of his heroine (and might have changed the name of the opera, had it been produced) to avoid creating the assumption that his work was a treatment of Corelli's then very popular novel. Since that precaution is scarcely necessary today, Meadows and Harrison decided to revert to the original Thelma.

There are minor discrepancies between the full score and the vocal score (the occasional passage occurring in different keys in the two, for example), but nothing that would inhibit the production of a complete, staged performance.

Thelma received its world première in Croydon's Ashcroft Theatre in February 2012, the centenary year of the composer's death, performed by Surrey Opera in a new transcription by Stephen Anthony Brown.[22] It was conducted by Jonathan Butcher, directed by Christopher Cowell and designed by Bridget Kimak. Joanna Weeks sang the title role with Alberto Sousa as Eric and Håkan Vramsmo as Carl.

List of compositions

With opus number

  • Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 1 – 1893
  • Nonet in F minor for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, contrabass and piano, Op. 2 – 1894
  • Suite for Violin and Organ (or piano), Op. 3 (Suite de Piêces)- 1893
  • Ballade in D minor, Op. 4 – 1895
  • Five Fantasiestücke, Op. 5 – 1896
  • Little Songs for Little Folks, Op. 6 – 1898
  • Zara's Earrings, Op. 7 – 1895
  • Symphony in A minor, Op. 8 – 1896
  • Two Romantic Pieces, Op. 9 – 1896
  • Quintet in F sharp minor for clarinet and strings, Op. 10 – 1895
  • Southern Love Songs, Op. 12 – 1896
  • String Quartet in D minor, Op. 13 – 1896 (lost)
  • Legend (Concertstück), Op. 14
  • Land of the Sun, Op. 15 – 1897
  • Three Hiawatha Sketches for violin and piano, Op. 16 – 1897
  • African Romances (P. L. Dunbar) Op. 17 – 1897
  • Morning and Evening Service in F, Op. 18 – 1899
  • Two Moorish Tone-Pictures, Op. 19 – 1897
  • Gypsy Suite, Op. 20 – 1898
  • Part Songs, Op. 21 – 1898
  • Four Characteristic Waltzes, Op. 22 – 1899
  • Valse-Caprice, Op. 23 – 1898
  • In Memoriam, three rhapsodies for low voice and piano, Op. 24 – 1898
  • Dream Lovers, Operatic Romance, Op. 25 – 1898
  • The Gitanos, canata-operetta, Op. 26 – 1898
  • Violin Sonata in D minor, Op. 28 – ?1898 (pub. 1917)
  • Three Songs, Op. 29 – 1898
  • The Song of Hiawatha, Op. 30 ("Overture to The Song of Hiawatha", 1899; "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast", 1898; "The Death of Minnehaha", 1899; "Hiawatha's Departure", 1900)
  • Three Humoresques, Op. 31 – 1898
  • Ballade in A minor, Op. 33 – 1898
  • African Suite, Op. 35 – 1899
  • Six Songs, Op. 37
  • Three Silhouettes, Op. 38 – 1904
  • Romance in G, Op. 39 – 1900
  • Solemn Prelude, Op. 40 – 1899
  • Scenes From An Everyday Romance, Op. 41 – 1900
  • The Soul's Expression, four sonnets, Op. 42 – 1900
  • The Blind Girl of Castél-Cuillé, Op. 43
  • Idyll, Op. 44 – 1901
  • Six American Lyrics, Op. 45 – 1903
  • Concert Overture, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Op. 46 – 1901
  • Hemo Dance, scherzo, Op. 47(1) – 1902
  • Herod, incidental music, Op. 47(2) – 1901
  • Meg Blane, Rhapsody of the Sea, Op. 48 – 1902
  • Ullyses, incidental music, Op. 49 – 1902
  • Three Song Poems, Op. 50 – 1904
  • Four Novelletten, Op. 51(1?) – 1903
  • Ethiopia Saluting the Colours, march, Op. 51(2?) – 1902
  • The Atonement, sacred cantata, Op. 53 – 1903
  • Five Choral Ballads, Op. 54 – 1904
  • Moorish Dance, Op. 55 – 1904
  • Three Cameos for Piano, Op. 56 – 1904
  • Six Sorrow Songs, Op. 57 – 1904
  • Four African Dances, Op. 58 – 1904
  • Twenty-Four Negro Melodies, Op. 59(1) – 1905
  • Romance, Op. 59(2) – 1904
  • Kubla Khan, rhapsody, Op. 61 – 1905
  • Nero, incidental music, Op. 62 – 1906
  • Symphonic Variations on an African Air, Op. 63 – 1906
  • Scenes de Ballet, Op. 64 – 1906
  • Endymion's Dream, one-act opera, Op. 65 – 1910
  • Forest Scenes, Op. 66 – 1907
  • Part Songs, Op. 67 – 1905
  • Bon-Bon Suite, Op. 68 – 1908
  • Sea Drift, Op. 69 – 1908
  • Faust, incidental music, Op. 70 – 1908
  • Valse Suite: "Three fours", Op. 71- 1909
  • Thelma, opera in three acts, Op. 72 – 1907-09
  • Ballade in C minor, Op. 73 – 1909
  • Forest of Wild Thyme, incidental music, Op. 74 (five numbers) – 1911–25
  • Rhapsodic Dance, The Bamboula, Op. 75 – 1911
  • A Tale of Old Japan, Op. 76 – 1911
  • Petite Suite de Concert, Op. 77 – 1911
  • Three Impromptus, Op. 78 – 1911
  • Othello, incidental music, Op. 79 – 1911
  • Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 80 – 1912
  • Two Songs for Baritone Voice, Op. 81 – 1913
  • Hiawatha Ballet in five scenes, Op. 82 – 1920[23]

Without opus number

  • The Lee Shore
  • Eulalie
  • Variations for Cello and Piano

Recordings

References

  1. 1 2 Earl Stewart and Jane Duran, "Coleridge-Taylor: Concatenationism and Essentialism in an Anglo-African Composer", American Philosophical Association, Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience, Vol. 99, No. 1, 1999, accessed 24 February 2011.
  2. ↑ Mike Phillips, "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)". Black Europeans: A British Library Online Gallery feature.
  3. ↑ Lost Lives: Coleridge Taylor
  4. 1 2
  5. ↑ "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, at Jeffrey Green website.
  6. ↑ Thompsonian.info
  7. 1 2 Green, Jeffrey, "Do we really know Samuel Coleridge-Taylor?" Talk for the Black & Asian Studies Association (BASA) Conference, London, 27 June 2009.
  8. ↑ Roberts, Brian (2012). "A London Legacy of Ira Aldridge: Henry Francis Downing and the Paratheatrical Poetics of Plot and Cast(e)". Modern Drama. 55 (3): 396–397. doi:10.3138/md.55.3.386.
  9. ↑ Elford, Charles, "Black Mahler: The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Story". Black Mahler website.
  10. ↑ Cambridge Community Chorus
  11. ↑ Classical Archives
  12. ↑ "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor", BBC Music.
  13. ↑ The Crisis magazine September 1913
  14. ↑ "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor", Black Europeans website
  15. ↑ De Lerma, Dominique-Rene. "African Heritage Symphonic Series". Liner note essay. Cedille Records CDR055.
  16. ↑ Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation website. The lists were donated to the SCTF website by Dominique-Rene de Lerma.
  17. ↑ Samuel Coleridge-Taylor blue plaque in London
  18. ↑ Hannah Williamson, "Ronnie Corbett, Samuel Coleridge Taylor and Peggy Ashcroft immortalised on bench in Charles Street, Croydon", Croydon Guardian, 18 June 2013.
  19. ↑ "A Tribute to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor", Hilary Burrage.
  20. ↑ "Concert to Feature Centennial Performance of Work by Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor". Harvard University Gazette. 15 October 1998. Retrieved 8 February 2008.
  21. ↑ Carr, Catherine (2005). The Music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912): A Critical and Analytical Study (PDF) (Thesis). University of Durham.
  22. ↑ Surrey Opera
  23. ↑ Coleridge-Taylor, Avril, The Heritage of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, London: Dobson, 1979, pp. 145–154.

Sources and further reading

Scores
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