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This talented musician continually experienced the weight of her parent’s reputation. As the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known British musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of the past.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I sat with these memories as I made arrangements to record the inaugural album of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and bold rhythms, her composition will provide audiences fascinating insight into how this artist – a wartime composer who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. One needs patience to adapt, to recognize outlines as they really are, to tell reality from misinterpretation, and I had been afraid to confront her history for some time.

I earnestly desired the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, that held. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be observed in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the names of her parent’s works to realize how he identified as both a standard-bearer of English Romanticism but a voice of the African diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

White America assessed the composer by the excellence of his art as opposed to the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, the composer – the son of a parent from Sierra Leone and a British mother – turned toward his background. Once the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He set Dunbar’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral composition that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an global success, especially with the Black community who felt vicarious pride as white America judged Samuel by the brilliance of his music rather than the his background.

Principles and Actions

Recognition did not temper his activism. In 1900, he attended the pioneering African conference in London where he met the Black American thinker the renowned Du Bois and saw a range of talks, covering the oppression of African people in South Africa. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with trailblazers for equality including Du Bois and the educator Washington, gave addresses on racial equality, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the White House in that year. As for his music, the scholar reflected, “he made his mark so notably as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, in his thirties. Yet how might the composer have reacted to his child’s choice to be in this country in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the right policy”, the composer stated Jet. Upon further questioning, she backtracked: she was not in favor with apartheid “in principle” and it “should be allowed to run its course, guided by good-intentioned South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her father’s politics, or born in the US under segregation, she may have reconsidered about apartheid. Yet her life had protected her.

Background and Inexperience

“I possess a English document,” she said, “and the officials never asked me about my race.” Therefore, with her “fair” appearance (according to the magazine), she traveled alongside white society, buoyed up by their praise for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and directed the national orchestra in the city, featuring the bold final section of her concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a confident pianist on her own, she never played as the soloist in her concerto. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, in her own words, she “may foster a change”. But by 1954, things fell apart. Once officials became aware of her mixed background, she could no longer stay the nation. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the diplomatic official recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She returned to England, embarrassed as the scale of her naivety became clear. “The lesson was a difficult one,” she stated. Compounding her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

While I reflected with these memories, I felt a familiar story. The story of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – which recalls troops of color who defended the English in the global conflict and made it through but were not given their earned rewards. Including those from Windrush,