Everything about Samuel Coleridge-taylor totally explained
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (
August 15,
1875 –
September 1,
1912) was an
English composer who achieved such success he was called the "African
Mahler."
History
Coleridge-Taylor was born in
Holborn,
London, to a
Sierra Leonean
Krio father, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, and an
English mother, Alice Hare Martin. He was named after English poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge; the hyphen in his surname was initially a typographical error, which he then adopted for his professional name.
His father was appointed in the late 1890s
coroner for the
British Empire in the
Gambia. He had returned to
West Africa before Samuel's birth. He was brought up in
Croydon by Martin and her adopted parents, who were called Holmans, and who were a highly musical family but never corresponded with his father who probably was unaware of his son's existence. He studied at the
Royal College of Music under
Charles Villiers Stanford who conducted the first performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, and later taught and conducted the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire. He married Jessie Walmisley, a fellow student of his at the RCM who left there in 1893, in 1899 despite her parents' objection to his
mixed race parentage. By her he'd a son, Hiawatha (1900-1980) and a daughter, Avril, born Gwendolyn (1903-1998).
He had earned a reputation as a composer in 1896, later helped by Sir
Edward Elgar who recommended him to the
Three Choirs Festival which premiered his
Ballade in A Minor. His early work was also guided by the influential music editor and critic
August Jaeger of music publisher Novello, who told Elgar that Samuel was "a genius." His successes brought him a tour of the United States in 1904, which in turn increased his interest in his racial heritage. He sought to do for
African music what
Johannes Brahms did for
Hungarian music and
Antonín Dvořák for
Bohemian music. He had met the American poet
Paul Laurence Dunbar in London and set some of his poems to music, and was also encouraged by Dunbar and other black people to consider his ancestry and the music of the African continent.
Coleridge-Taylor was sometimes seen as shy, but effective in communicating when conducting. He was very kind. Composers were not handsomely paid for their efforts and often sold the rights to works outright, thereby missing out on royalties (a scheme which became widespread only in 1911) which went to publishers who always risked their investments. He was much sought after for adjudicating at festivals.
Coleridge-Taylor was 37 when he died of
pneumonia. His widow gave the impression that she was almost penniless but
King George V granted her a pension of
GB£100, evidence of the composer's high regard. A memorial concert was held later in 1912 at the
Royal Albert Hall and gathered £300. His estate was thus worth approx the price of three houses, and there were royalties from compositions (not Hiawatha which he'd sold)
Coleridge-Taylor's work was later championed by Sir
Malcolm Sargent who conducted ten seasons of of a costumed ballet version of
Hiawatha at the
Royal Albert Hall between 1928 and 1939 with the Royal Choral Society (600 to 800 singers) and 200 dancers.
Legacy
Coleridge-Taylor's greatest success was perhaps his
cantata Hiawatha's Wedding-feast, which was widely performed by choral groups in England during Coleridge-Taylor's lifetime and into the present day, with a popularity rivalled only by chorus standards
George Frideric Handel's
Messiah and
Felix Mendelssohn's
Elijah. He followed this with several other pieces about Hiawatha:
The Death of Minnehaha,
Overture to The Song of Hiawatha and
Hiawatha's Departure. The
Hiawatha seasons at the Royal Albert Hall were conducted by Sargent and were tremendously popular, involving hundreds of choristers and scenery covering the organ loft. The concerts ended in 1939.
He also completed an array of
chamber music,
anthems, and
African Dances for
violin, among other works. The
Petite Suite de Concert is still regularly played. As well, he set to music one poem by his near-namesake,
The Legend of Kubla Khan.
Coleridge-Taylor was greatly admired by
African-Americans; in 1901, a 200-voice African-American chorus was founded in
Washington, D.C., named the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society. He visited the USA three times receiving great acclaim and earned the title "the African Mahler" from the white orchestral musicians in New York in 1910.
Coleridge-Taylor composed a violin concerto for the American violinist
Maud Powell, the American performance of which was postponed because the parts were lost aboard the
RMS Titanic. It has been recorded by
Philippe Graffin and the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra,
Anthony Marwood and the
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under
Martyn Brabbins (on
Hyperion Records) and Lorraine McAslan and the
London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by
Nicholas Braithwaite (on
Lyrita). The concerto was also performed at
Harvard University's
Sanders Theatre in the fall of 1998 by
John McLaughlin Williams and William Thomas as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of the composition of
Hiawatha's Wedding-Feast.
Posthumous publishing
In 1999, freelance music editor
Patrick Meadows discovered that three important chamber works by Coleridge-Taylor had apparently never been printed and made available to musicians. After receiving copies from the
Royal College of Music in London, he made playing editions of the Nonet, Piano Quintet, and Piano Trio. The works were then performed in Meadows's regular chamber music festival on the island of
Mallorca, and were well-received by the public as well as the performers. The first modern performances of these works were done in the early 1990s by the Boston, Massachusetts-based Coleridge Ensemble, led by
William Thomas of
Phillips Academy,
Andover. This group subsequently made world premiere recordings of the
Nonet,
Fantasiestücke for string quartet and
Six Negro Folksongs for piano trio which were released in 1998 from Afka Records. Thomas, a champion of lost works by black composers, also revived Coleridge's
Hiawatha's Wedding feast in a performance commemorating the composition's 100th anniversary with the Cambridge Community Chorus at Harvard's Sanders Theatre in the spring of 1998.
The
Nash Ensemble's recording of the Piano Quintet was released in 2007.
In 2006, Meadows finished engraving the first edition of Coleridge-Taylor's
Symphony in A minor. He has also finished transcribing from the RCM manuscript the
Haytian Dances, a work virtually identical to the
Noveletten, but with a fifth movement inserted by Coleridge-Taylor, based on the Scherzo of the symphony. This work is for
string orchestra,
tambourine, and
triangle.
When searching through the collection of Coleridge-Taylor’s manuscripts lodged in the
British Library, Lionel Harrison (Patrick Meadows’ proof-reading assistant) unearthed the score of Coleridge-Taylor’s three-act grand opera ‘Thelma’, long thought to have been either lost, or destroyed by its composer. Thelma is a Nordic saga of deceit, magic, retribution and the triumph of love over wickedness. The composer has followed
Richard Wagner’s manner in eschewing the established ‘numbers’ opera format, preferring to blend recitative, aria and ensemble into a seamless whole. The title Thelma is curious in that there's no character of that name in the piece. It seems originally to have been called ‘The Amulet’. It is possible that the composer had read
Marie Corelli’s 1887 Nordic novel Thelma (it appears that the name ‘Thelma’ was created by Corelli for her heroine).
The full score and a vocal score (both manuscripts in the composer’s hand) are in the British Library – the full score is unbound but complete (save that the vocal parts don't have the words after the first few folios) but the vocal score is bound (in three volumes) and complete with words. Harrison has prepared a libretto from the vocal score (no mean feat, considering Coleridge-Taylor’s legendarily indecipherable handwriting!) The librettist is uncredited and may be Coleridge-Taylor himself.
There are some very minor discrepancies between the full score and the vocal score (the occasional passage occurring in different keys in the two, for example) but nothing which would inhibit the production of a complete, staged performance. Patrick Meadows is currently preparing an edition of Thelma with the keen hope of securing a staging on or before the anniversary of the composer’s death in 2012.
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