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Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the weight of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous UK musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s name was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I sat with these shadows as I prepared to make the world premiere recording of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Featuring intense musical themes, soulful lyricism, and confident beats, Avril’s work will offer new listeners valuable perspective into how the composer – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

However about the past. It can take a while to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to face the composer’s background for some time.

I deeply hoped the composer to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, she was. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be detected in numerous compositions, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the headings of her family’s music to realize how he viewed himself as both a standard-bearer of UK romantic tradition as well as a advocate of the African heritage.

It was here that Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

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

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the child of a Sierra Leonean father and a British mother – turned toward his African roots. At the time the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the young musician actively pursued him. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the following year incorporated his poetry for a stage piece, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, especially with Black Americans who felt indirect honor as the majority assessed his work by the excellence of his music instead of the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper his beliefs. In 1900, he was present at the initial Pan African gathering in London where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar the renowned Du Bois and saw a range of talks, such as the mistreatment of African people in South Africa. He was an activist to his final days. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality like Du Bois and the educator Washington, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on racial problems with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the US capital in that year. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so notably as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in 1912, in his thirties. However, how would Samuel have made of his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “in principle” and it “should be allowed to run its course, directed by well-meaning residents of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more attuned to her father’s politics, or born in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a UK passport,” she said, “and the officials never asked me about my race.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as Jet put it), she moved within European circles, buoyed up by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the educational institution and led the national orchestra in the city, programming the bold final section of her composition, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a confident pianist on her own, she never played as the featured artist in her work. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era performed under her direction.

She desired, according to her, she “could introduce a shift”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. Once officials became aware of her Black ancestry, she was forced to leave the nation. Her British passport offered no defense, the diplomatic official urged her to go or face arrest. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the extent of her innocence dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she stated. Increasing her humiliation was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I felt a known narrative. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – one that calls to mind Black soldiers who defended the British throughout the second world war and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,