Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a pioneering Black British composer, produced a wealth of orchestral, choral, and chamber music, much of it in a Romantic idiom that attained a wide, popular appeal. Born in London in 1875 to a white Englishwoman and a medical student from Sierra Leone, Coleridge-Taylor surmounted the barriers of race and class to study violin and composition at London’s Royal College of Music. His first breakthrough came at age 23, when, on a recommendation from Edward Elgar, the prestigious Three Choirs Festival commissioned his lush orchestral Ballade in A minor (1895). His greatest triumph came with The Song of Hiawatha (1898-1900), a trilogy of cantatas inspired by Longfellow’s poem of the same name. Its first part, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, received hundreds of performances and sold thousands of published copies. When, in 1904, Coleridge-Taylor made the first of three U.S. tours, President Theodore Roosevelt received him at the White House and a Marine band played his music for an audience of 2,700. Coleridge-Taylor at times explored his cultural heritage, notably in his African Suite for piano (1898) and African Dances for violin and piano (1904). He also struggled financially, having sold the copyright to Hiawatha for just 15 guineas. Coleridge-Taylor died of pneumonia at age 37, three months after violinist Maud Powell gave the 1912 premiere of his Violin Concerto in G minor.