Stepping from Obscurity: Why Avril Coleridge-Taylor Deserves to Be Listened To

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor constantly experienced the pressure of her family legacy. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known UK artists of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of history.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I reflected on these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the world premiere recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will provide audiences deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer born in 1903 – conceived of her world as a artist with mixed heritage.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about shadows. It requires time to adjust, to perceive forms as they really are, to separate fact from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to face the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, she was. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be detected in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to review the names of her parent’s works to understand how he heard himself as both a standard-bearer of British Romantic style but a representative of the African diaspora.

It was here that Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

The United States judged Samuel by the excellence of his music as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, her father – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – turned toward his African roots. When the African American poet this literary figure came to London in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He composed Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the following year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the quality of his art instead of the his race.

Principles and Actions

Success failed to diminish his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in England where he met the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a series of speeches, such as the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was an activist until the end. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality like Du Bois and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the White House in 1904. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, in his thirties. However, how would the composer have made of his daughter’s decision to be in South Africa in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When pushed to clarify, she backtracked: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by well-meaning residents of all races”. Had Avril been more in tune to her family’s principles, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about the policy. However, existence had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the officials did not inquire me about my background.” Therefore, with her “light” skin (as described), she moved alongside white society, buoyed up by their praise for her renowned family member. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the broadcasting ensemble in that location, programming the bold final section of her composition, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a accomplished player personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her concerto. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

Avril hoped, as she stated, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. When government agents discovered her African heritage, she was forced to leave the nation. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or face arrest. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the extent of her inexperience became clear. “The lesson was a painful one,” she stated. Adding to her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these legacies, I felt a familiar story. The story of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the UK in the global conflict and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,