Coleridge-Taylor, Samuel (EN)

Coleridge-Taylor Samuel, *15 August 1875 London, †1 September 1912 Croydon (Surrey), English composer and conductor. He was the son of a doctor from Sierra Leone and an Englishwoman. He first studied the violin; in 1890 he began his studies at the Royal College of Music in London, and from 1892 to 1897 in the class of Ch. Stanford (composition); his chamber and orchestral works were already being performed at that time, including his Symphony in A minor in London in 1896. The cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, performed in 1898 under Stanford’s direction in London, brought him great fame in England and the United States. From 1901 to 1904, he was the conductor of the Westmorland Festival, and from 1904 until his death, the conductor of the Handel Society; he also held this position with many other choral and orchestral societies in England. In 1903, he became a professor of composition at Trinity College of Music in London, and from 1910 at the Guildhall School of Music there. In 1904, 1906, and 1910, he conducted tours of the United States; the last of these was at the invitation of the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society in Washington, D.C., which had been founded there in 1901. Coleridge-Taylor’s son, Hiawatha (*1900), was a conductor, while his daughter, Avril Gwendolen (1903–1998), was a composer of numerous orchestral and vocal works, a conductor, and a music journalist.

Coleridge-Taylor’s early compositions (Symphony in A minor) showed a certain dependence on the prevailing European conventions in the style of M. Bruch; this is also what accounted for their success in England and Germany. His encounter with the music of the late Dvořák and his attempts to adapt African-American folklore awakened in Coleridge-Taylor a sense of racial identity and prompted him to undertake similar explorations; without succumbing too much to the influence of Dvořák’s compositional technique, he drew from the same sources of inspiration (African American melodies, Longfellow’s poetry), while also expanding their scope to include music from Africa. This type of work gained recognition in England, while in the U.S. it aroused enthusiasm among African American musical circles; the demand for Coleridge-Taylor’s works meant that nearly all of them were published. The composer’s fame was bolstered by his talent as a conductor: in New York, he was hailed as the “Black Mahler.” The one-sidedness of the accepted convention led to a certain stagnation in Coleridge-Taylor’s creative technique, which was otherwise characterized by sensitivity to timbre, originality of orchestral and choral texture, and a comprehensive mastery of form, especially the variation form. It was not until his later works (Violin Concerto, the cantata A Tale of Old Japan) that a shift in his musical approach occurred. Coleridge-Taylor’s works, with the exception of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast and A Tale of Old Japan, are rarely performed today; nevertheless, his significance as the first outstanding African-American professional composer is considerable.

Literature: W.C. Berwick Sayers S. Coleridge-Taylor, Musician. His Life and Letters, London 1915, 2nd ed. 1927; J. Coleridge-Taylor S. Coleridge-Taylor. A Memory Sketch, London 1942; J. Coleridge-Taylor Coleridge-Taylor. Genius and Musician, London 1943; H. Parry S. Coleridge-Taylor. A Tribute, “The Musical Times” LIII, 1912; H. Antcliffe Some Notes on Coleridge-Taylor, “The Musical Quarterly” VIII, 1922; A.G. Coleridge-Taylor The Music of Coleridge-Taylor, “Sound”, April 1947; P.M. Young S. Coleridge-Taylor, 1875–1912, “The Musical Times” CXVI, 1975; J.T. Thompson S. Coleridge-Taylor. The Development of His Compositional Style, 1994; B.R. Schueneman The Search for the Minor Composer. The Case of S. Coleridge-Taylor, “Musie Reference Services Quarterly” III, 1995.