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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the pressure of her father’s legacy. Being the child of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known English artists of the 1900s, her identity was shrouded in the long shadows of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I sat with these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the first-ever recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. With its emotional harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, her composition will grant music lovers deep understanding into how this artist – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – envisioned her existence as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about the past. It requires time to acclimate, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to face Avril’s past for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, she was. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be detected in many of her works, including From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to look at the titles of her family’s music to understand how he identified as not just a flag bearer of British Romantic style and also a representative of the African heritage.

It was here that Samuel and Avril began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his art rather than the his racial background.

Family Background

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a Caucasian parent – began embracing his background. When the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in 1897, the 21-year-old composer was keen to meet him. He set Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral composition that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an worldwide sensation, especially with Black Americans who felt vicarious pride as American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Recognition did not reduce his beliefs. During that period, he attended the pioneering African conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and observed a range of talks, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner throughout his life. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality such as this intellectual and this leader, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even discussed racial problems with the American leader during an invitation to the White House in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he made his mark so notably as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in 1912, in his thirties. But what would the composer have thought of his child’s choice to be in South Africa in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to South African policy,” ran a headline in the community journal Jet magazine. This policy “seems to me the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she was not in favor with this policy “in principle” and it “could be left to run its course, overseen by benevolent residents of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more in tune to her father’s politics, or from the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about the policy. However, existence had protected her.

Identity and Naivety

“I possess a UK passport,” she remarked, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “light” appearance (as described), she floated alongside white society, buoyed up by their admiration for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the University of Cape Town and conducted the broadcasting ensemble in Johannesburg, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, titled: “In remembrance of my Father.” While a confident pianist herself, she never played as the featured artist in her piece. Rather, she always led as the maestro; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

She desired, as she stated, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, the situation collapsed. When government agents became aware of her mixed background, she had to depart the nation. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She returned to England, deeply ashamed as the magnitude of her naivety was realized. “The lesson was a painful one,” she expressed. Compounding her disgrace was the printing that year of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Common Narrative

Upon contemplating with these memories, I sensed a familiar story. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who served for the British in the World War II and lived only to be refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,