🔗 Share this article

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the burden of her family legacy. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous British composers of the 1900s, Avril’s reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of history.

An Inaugural Recording

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will provide music lovers deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her existence as a woman of colour.

Legacy and Reality

However about legacies. It can take a while to adapt, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to address Avril’s past for a while.

I earnestly desired her to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, that held. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be heard in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only look at the titles of her family’s music to realize how he identified as not just a champion of English Romanticism and also a representative of the African heritage.

It was here that Samuel and Avril began to differ.

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

Family Background

While he was studying at the renowned institution, her father – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – turned toward his heritage. Once the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He adapted Dunbar’s African Romances to music and the next year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an worldwide sensation, notably for Black Americans who felt shared pride as American society evaluated the composer by the excellence of his music rather than the his background.

Principles and Actions

Success failed to diminish his activism. In 1900, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in London where he encountered the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner to his final days. He maintained ties with early civil rights leaders like Du Bois and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even talked about racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the White House in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so high as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in 1912, in his thirties. However, how would the composer have reacted to his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to South African policy,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she backtracked: she did not support with apartheid “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, directed by benevolent residents of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her family’s principles, or from the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a UK passport,” she said, “and the government agents did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she floated within European circles, supported by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her family’s work at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a accomplished player herself, she avoided playing as the soloist in her piece. On the contrary, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “may foster a transformation”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities became aware of her Black ancestry, she had to depart the country. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the UK representative advised her to leave or face arrest. She came home, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her innocence was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she lamented. Adding to her humiliation was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I felt a known narrative. The account of identifying as British until it’s revoked – which recalls Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the British throughout the World War II and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,