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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the pressure of her father’s heritage. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known UK composers of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s name was shrouded in the lingering obscurity of the past.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I contemplated these legacies as I made arrangements to record the first-ever recording of the composer’s 1936 piano concerto. Boasting impassioned harmonies, expressive melodies, and confident beats, Avril’s work will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – a composer during war who entered the world in 1903 – imagined her world as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to adapt, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from misinterpretation, and I was reluctant to confront the composer’s background for some time.

I deeply hoped Avril to be following in her father’s footsteps. Partially, this was true. The rustic British sounds of parental inspiration can be observed in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the headings of her family’s music to understand how he viewed himself as not only a champion of English Romanticism and also a advocate of the African diaspora.

At this point Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

The United States judged Samuel by the excellence of his compositions instead of the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a white English mother – began embracing his African roots. When the Black American writer Paul Laurence Dunbar visited the UK in 1897, the 21-year-old composer actively pursued him. He set the poet’s African Romances into music and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came 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 international hit, particularly among African Americans who felt shared pride as American society evaluated the composer by the excellence of his music rather than the his background.

Principles and Actions

Recognition did not reduce his activism. At the turn of the century, he attended the pioneering African conference in the UK where he met the Black American thinker this influential figure and saw a range of talks, including on the oppression of African people in South Africa. He remained an advocate until the end. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights such as Du Bois and the educator Washington, gave addresses on equality for all, and even talked about racial problems with the US President on a trip to the presidential residence in 1904. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so prominently as a creative artist that it will endure.” He succumbed in the early 20th century, aged 37. But what would Samuel have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to the African nation in the 1950s?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer expresses approval to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, Avril told Jet. When pushed to clarify, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with this policy “in principle” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, guided by well-meaning South Africans of every background”. If Avril had been more attuned to her family’s principles, or raised in Jim Crow America, she might have thought twice about the policy. Yet her life had protected her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I possess a British passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents never asked me about my background.” So, with her “fair” appearance (according to the magazine), she moved alongside white society, buoyed up by their praise for her deceased parent. She gave a talk about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in Johannesburg, featuring the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist on her own, she did not perform as the lead performer in her piece. Instead, she always led as the maestro; and so the apartheid orchestra followed her lead.

She desired, in her own words, she “might bring a transformation”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. When government agents became aware of her mixed background, she had to depart the nation. Her British passport offered no defense, the diplomatic official advised her to leave or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her naivety dawned. “This experience was a painful one,” she lamented. Adding to her disgrace was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these shadows, I sensed a recurring theme. The story of holding UK citizenship until you’re not – that brings to mind Black soldiers who served for the English during the World War II and survived only to be refused rightful benefits. Along with the Windrush era,