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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the burden of her family heritage. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent UK artists of the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s identity was cloaked in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these memories as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will offer audiences fascinating insight into how she – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – imagined her reality as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about the past. It requires time to acclimate, to see shapes as they really are, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I had been afraid to confront the composer’s background for a period.

I had so wanted her to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be heard in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the headings of her family’s music to understand how he viewed himself as both a champion of British Romantic style but a representative of the African diaspora.

At this point father and daughter began to differ.

White America evaluated Samuel by the brilliance of his music rather than the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the son of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – began embracing his African roots. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He set the poet’s African Romances to music and the subsequent year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, particularly among the Black community who felt vicarious pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the brilliance of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not temper his beliefs. In 1900, he was present at the pioneering African conference in England where he met the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, such as the mistreatment of the Black community there. He was an activist throughout his life. He kept connections with early civil rights leaders like this intellectual and Booker T Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with the American leader on a trip to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so high as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He passed away in the early 20th century, at 37 years old. Yet how might the composer have made of his offspring’s move to travel to this country in the 1950s?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she didn’t agree with the system “fundamentally” and it “ought to be permitted to run its course, guided by good-intentioned residents of all races”. Had Avril been more aligned to her father’s politics, or raised in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about the policy. However, existence had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a English document,” she remarked, “and the government agents never asked me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as described), she moved within European circles, buoyed up by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in that location, including the inspiring part of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist on her own, she avoided playing as the soloist in her piece. On the contrary, she always led as the leader; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, as she stated, she “may foster a shift”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. When government agents learned of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the nation. Her citizenship didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official urged her to go or risk imprisonment. She came home, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she stated. Compounding her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The story of identifying as British until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the English during the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,