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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the weight of her father’s legacy. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known English musicians of the turn of the 20th century, her name was cloaked in the deep shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these shadows as I made arrangements to produce the inaugural album of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring impassioned harmonies, heartfelt tunes, and bold rhythms, this piece will provide audiences deep understanding into how she – an artist in conflict born in 1903 – envisioned her reality as a female composer of color.

Legacy and Reality

But here’s the thing about the past. One needs patience to adapt, to perceive forms as they really are, to distinguish truth from misrepresentation, and I felt hesitant to face the composer’s background for some time.

I had so wanted Avril to be a reflection of her father. In some ways, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be detected in numerous compositions, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to look at the titles of her family’s music to see how he identified as not just a champion of English Romanticism as well as a advocate of the African heritage.

At this point parent and child seemed to diverge.

The United States evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the his ethnicity.

Family Background

As a student at the Royal College of Music, her father – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – turned toward his heritage. At the time the African American poet this literary figure visited the UK in that era, the aspiring artist 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. This was followed by the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an worldwide sensation, especially with the Black community who felt indirect honor as American society judged Samuel by the excellence of his art rather than the his race.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper his activism. In 1900, he attended the pioneering African conference in London where he made the acquaintance of the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and witnessed a range of talks, covering the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He kept connections with pioneers of civil rights such as the scholar and Booker T Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on matters of race with President Theodore Roosevelt on a trip to the presidential residence in 1904. Regarding his compositions, the scholar reflected, “he established his reputation so notably as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in 1912, aged 37. Yet how might the composer have made of his offspring’s move to travel to South Africa in the that decade?

Controversy and Apartheid

“Offspring of Renowned Musician shows support to S African Bias,” appeared as a heading in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “struck me as the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she was not in favor with this policy “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by good-intentioned South Africans of all races”. If Avril had been more aligned to her father’s politics, or from Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had shielded her.

Background and Inexperience

“I have a British passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents failed to question me about my race.” Thus, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she moved within European circles, lifted by their acclaim for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the University of Cape Town and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, including the heroic third movement of her concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she did not perform as the featured artist in her concerto. Rather, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

She desired, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. But by 1954, circumstances deteriorated. After authorities learned of her mixed background, she had to depart the land. Her British passport didn’t protect her, the British high commissioner recommended her departure or be jailed. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the scale of her innocence dawned. “The realization was a hard one,” she expressed. Compounding her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the English during the second world war and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. And the Windrush generation,