Emerging from the Shadows: Why Avril Coleridge-Taylor Warrants to Be Recognized

The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always felt the weight of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known British musicians of the early 20th century, the composer’s reputation was enveloped in the lingering obscurity of bygone eras.

An Inaugural Recording

Earlier this year, I contemplated these shadows as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of Avril’s piano concerto from 1936. With its emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, her composition will offer audiences deep understanding into how this artist – a wartime composer originating from the early 1900s – envisioned her existence as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

Yet about shadows. It can take a while to acclimate, to perceive forms as they really are, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to face Avril’s past for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, that held. The rustic British sounds of her father’s impact can be observed in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the names of her parent’s works to understand how he identified as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style but a voice of the Black diaspora.

It was here that father and daughter appeared to part ways.

White America assessed the composer by the excellence of his music instead of the his racial background.

Parental Heritage

While he was studying at the renowned institution, her father – the child of a African father and a British mother – began embracing his background. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure visited the UK in that era, the young musician was keen to meet him. He set this literary work to music and the following year adapted his verses for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an worldwide sensation, notably for Black Americans who felt shared pride as the majority evaluated the composer by the excellence of his music rather than the his race.

Principles and Actions

Fame did not reduce his activism. At the turn of the century, he attended the initial Pan African gathering in the UK where he met the African American intellectual the renowned Du Bois and witnessed a variety of discussions, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality such as this intellectual and this leader, gave addresses on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the US capital in the early 1900s. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so notably as a composer that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in 1912, at 37 years old. Yet how might the composer have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. When asked to explain, she backtracked: she didn’t agree with this policy “in principle” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by benevolent people of every background”. If Avril had been more in tune to her family’s principles, or raised in the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about the policy. However, existence had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a English document,” she remarked, “and the officials did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” appearance (as Jet put it), she floated alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She presented about her parent’s compositions at the educational institution and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in Johannesburg, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she avoided playing as the lead performer in her piece. Rather, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble followed her lead.

Avril hoped, according to her, she “might bring a shift”. However, by that year, circumstances deteriorated. When government agents learned of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the country. Her citizenship failed to safeguard her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her inexperience dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she lamented. Adding to her embarrassment was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The account of identifying as British until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the English throughout the second world war and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,