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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the burden of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the most famous English musicians of the 1900s, Avril’s identity was shrouded in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these shadows as I prepared to produce the world premiere recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, heartfelt tunes, and valiant rhythms, her composition will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how this artist – a composer during war born in 1903 – imagined her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

Yet about the past. One needs patience to adjust, to recognize outlines as they truly exist, to separate fact from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to confront the composer’s background for a while.

I had so wanted the composer to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, that held. The rustic British sounds of Samuel’s influence can be detected in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the names of her parent’s works to see how he identified as not only a flag bearer of English Romanticism and also a voice of the African heritage.

At this point father and daughter appeared to part ways.

American society assessed the composer by the excellence of his art rather than the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the renowned institution, Samuel – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – turned toward his African roots. When the poet of color this literary figure came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He composed this literary work into music and the next year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, notably for African Americans who felt shared pride as the majority assessed his work by the brilliance of his art rather than the his race.

Principles and Actions

Recognition failed to diminish his activism. At the turn of the century, he participated in the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he met the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and saw a series of speeches, covering the subjugation of the Black community there. He was an activist to his final days. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights like Du Bois and this leader, spoke publicly on ending discrimination, and even talked about issues of racism with the American leader during an invitation to the US capital in that year. In terms of his art, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so high as a creative artist that it will long be remembered.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, aged 37. Yet how might Samuel have made of his daughter’s decision to travel to the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to South African policy,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she revised her statement: she did not support with apartheid “in principle” and it “could be left to resolve itself, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her family’s principles, or born in Jim Crow America, she may have reconsidered about this system. However, existence had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a British passport,” she stated, “and the government agents never asked me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” complexion (as Jet put it), she floated among the Europeans, buoyed up by their acclaim for her late father. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Although a skilled pianist personally, she did not perform as the lead performer in her concerto. Rather, she consistently conducted as the conductor; and so the segregated ensemble performed under her direction.

She desired, according to her, she “could introduce a transformation”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. Once officials discovered her mixed background, she had to depart the nation. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the UK representative recommended her departure or be jailed. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the extent of her innocence became clear. “The lesson was a hard one,” she stated. Adding to her embarrassment was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her forced leaving from South Africa.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these memories, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – one that calls to mind troops of color who served for the British in the second world war and lived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,