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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly bore the burden of her father’s legacy. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British composers of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I made arrangements to record the first-ever recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. With its intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and confident beats, this piece will offer audiences fascinating insight into how the composer – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to adapt, to see shapes as they truly exist, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I was reluctant to address her history for a while.

I earnestly desired the composer to be a reflection of her father. Partially, that held. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the titles of her father’s compositions to realize how he heard himself as not just a champion of British Romantic style and also a advocate of the African heritage.

It was here that father and daughter began to differ.

White America judged Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Family Background

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the son of a African father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his heritage. Once the African American poet the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in 1897, the young musician was keen to meet him. He adapted the poet’s African Romances to music and the following year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, notably for the Black community who felt vicarious pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the excellence of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper his activism. In 1900, he was present at the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, covering the subjugation of the Black community there. He was an activist throughout his life. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders such as Du Bois and the educator Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even discussed issues of racism with the US President while visiting to the presidential residence in 1904. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so high as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He passed away in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might the composer have reacted to his offspring’s move to be in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” ran a headline in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the right policy”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, overseen by benevolent South Africans of every background”. Were the composer more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or born in the US under segregation, she could have hesitated about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my race.” So, with her “porcelain-white” complexion (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, supported by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, programming the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, titled: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a accomplished player personally, she never played as the lead performer in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “might bring a shift”. However, by that year, things fell apart. After authorities discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the land. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official urged her to go or face arrest. She returned to England, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience was realized. “This experience was a difficult one,” she expressed. Adding to her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these memories, I felt a known narrative. The story of identifying as British until you’re not – which recalls Black soldiers who served for the British throughout the World War II and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,