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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the pressure of her parent’s heritage. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known English artists of the early 20th century, her reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of history.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to make the world premiere recording of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, this piece will offer audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – a composer during war born in 1903 – envisioned her world as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about the past. It requires time to adapt, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to separate fact from distortion, and I felt hesitant to face the composer’s background for a period.

I deeply hoped her to be a reflection of her father. Partially, she was. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be observed in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only examine the titles of her parent’s works to see how he viewed himself as not just a flag bearer of English Romanticism as well as a representative of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child began to differ.

American society evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his compositions rather than the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the child of a African father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his background. When the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He composed this literary work to music and the next year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an international hit, especially with African Americans who felt indirect honor as American society evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his compositions as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Success did not temper Samuel’s politics. During that period, he attended the pioneering African conference in the UK where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, including on the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist until the end. He sustained relationships with trailblazers for equality including Du Bois and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on equality for all, and even discussed matters of race with the US President on a trip to the US capital in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he established his reputation so high as a musician that it will endure.” He died in 1912, aged 37. But what would her father have thought of his child’s choice to work in South Africa in the mid-20th century?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the African American magazine Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the right policy”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to work itself out, directed by well-meaning residents of all races”. Were the composer more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in Jim Crow America, she could have hesitated about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I hold a British passport,” she stated, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” skin (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their praise for her renowned family member. She presented about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and conducted the national orchestra in the city, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her work. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

She desired, as she stated, she “may foster a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents became aware of her Black ancestry, she was forced to leave the land. Her UK document offered no defense, the UK representative advised her to leave or face arrest. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her innocence was realized. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she expressed. Increasing her humiliation was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her forced leaving from the country.

A Common Narrative

While I reflected with these shadows, I perceived a recurring theme. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who fought on behalf of the British during the World War II and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. And the Windrush generation,