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Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the pressure of her father’s heritage. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known English artists of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s reputation was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I reflected on these memories as I made arrangements to record the first-ever recording of her piano concerto from 1936. Featuring emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, her composition will provide audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. One needs patience to adapt, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I had been afraid to address Avril’s past for a period.

I earnestly desired the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, she was. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be detected in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the names of her family’s music to see how he viewed himself as not only a champion of UK romantic tradition but a advocate of the Black diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter began to differ.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his compositions rather than the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – turned toward his background. At the time the African American poet this literary figure arrived in England in 1897, the aspiring artist eagerly sought him out. He composed this literary work into music and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with African Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society evaluated the composer by the quality of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Fame failed to diminish Samuel’s politics. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in England where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was an activist throughout his life. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality such as the scholar and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even talked about racial problems with the US President during an invitation to the White House in that year. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so prominently as a musician that it will long be remembered.” He died in that year, at 37 years old. But what would the composer have made of his offspring’s move to be in this country in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with apartheid “in principle” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, directed by well-meaning South Africans of all races”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or from the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the government agents failed to question me about my background.” Thus, with her “light” appearance (as described), she traveled alongside white society, supported by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in that location, featuring the inspiring part of her composition, titled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she did not perform as the lead performer in her concerto. Instead, she always led as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a shift”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. When government agents learned of her Black ancestry, she was forced to leave the country. Her citizenship offered no defense, the UK representative urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the extent of her naivety dawned. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Adding to her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these memories, I felt a familiar story. The account of being British until you’re not – which recalls troops of color who defended the English during the global conflict and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,