Stepping from Darkness: Why Avril Coleridge-Taylor Warrants to Be Listened To

This talented musician constantly bore the weight of her family legacy. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous British composers of the 1900s, her reputation was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of history.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I sat with these legacies as I prepared to record the world premiere recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will offer music lovers valuable perspective into how the composer – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her existence as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

However about shadows. It can take a while to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to confront Avril’s past for a period.

I had so wanted Avril to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the titles of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not just a champion of British Romantic style as well as a representative of the Black diaspora.

This was where Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

American society assessed the composer by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the his racial background.

Family Background

During his studies at the prestigious music college, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. At the time the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in 1897, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year adapted his verses for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, notably for the Black community who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the excellence of his art instead of the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper his beliefs. During that period, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in England where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, covering the mistreatment of the Black community there. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality like the scholar and the educator Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even talked about racial problems with the American leader on a trip to the US capital in 1904. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so prominently as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He died in that year, in his thirties. However, how would Samuel have reacted to his child’s choice to work in the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by benevolent residents of every background”. If Avril had been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or from segregated America, she could have hesitated about the policy. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I hold a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” So, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she moved within European circles, supported by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She presented about her father’s music at the educational institution and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in the city, including the heroic third movement of her concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a skilled pianist personally, she did not perform as the lead performer in her concerto. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, things fell apart. When government agents discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the land. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the UK representative advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her innocence was realized. “The realization was a difficult one,” she lamented. Adding to her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these memories, I perceived a familiar story. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the British throughout the World War II and lived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,