Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a black British classical composer. During his short life, he became the most popular choral composer of his generation, and on three visits to the United States he was feted by both black and white musicians and audiences and met President Theodore Roosevelt. His major work, the cantata ‘Hiawatha’, continued to be regularly performed into the 1950s, and between the wars the conductor, Malcolm Sergeant, held annual celebrations of his music in the Albert Hall which attracted choirs from all over the country. He was the first black person to have a blue plaque on his home, and his name has figured recently in lists of famous black Britons.
Yet even older fans of classical music have probably not heard his music live. The centenary of his death in 1912 was ignored by the Proms and the Edinburgh Festival, although Opera magazine ran an article on scholarly research’ leading to the first performance that year of his only opera, ‘Thelma’.
I became interested in Coleridge-Taylor when, as a 17-year-old Scot at a state direct-grant school in Birkenhead, I encountered a determined music teacher who put on a performance of the three parts of Hiawatha with a girls’ choir of around 50 and piano accompaniment. Miss Wainwright (I don’t remember her first name) could be eccentric and authoritarian, but she was an excellent teacher. Around 50 in 1966, her tastes in music were wide, but she had a fondness for English music of the turn of the century. In 1965 the school performed Edward German’s ‘Merrie England’, with girls in the male roles including Walter Raleigh, (“A Perfect English Rose”) as well as a regal turn by the head girl as Elizabeth I (“Oh Peaceful England”). Hiawatha was a two-year project. The choir had already performed ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’ when I arrived at the school in 1964; the next year we sang ‘The Death of Minnehaha’ (as part of a mixed programme where for light relief we also sang ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’ and ‘the Marseillaise’). Finally, in summer 1966, with I recall Miss Wainwright’s own arrangement for female voices of the third part, ’Hiawatha’s Departure’, we performed the whole trilogy. The accompaniment was provided by Cecilia Sleightholme, an accomplished pianist, who was the music teacher at the wonderfully named St Werbergh’s in neighbouring Rock Ferry. The soprano solo was sung by Valerie Masterson, a former pupil, then in her late twenties, already making a name for herself with Doyle Carte, and later of course star of many productions at ENO and elsewhere.
The music was great fun to sing! It’s tuneful, and rhythmically interesting, and I suspect that Miss W, conducting kept things going at a brisk pace, with plenty of volume when needed. (One Christmas as we rehearsed her arrangement of ‘Stille Nacht’ with two choirs and recorder band, culminating in a fortissimo ‘Schlaf im himmlischer Ruh’, a passing teacher was heard to mutter, “Some hope of that!”). The cantata’s subject matter, after the excitements of the ‘Wedding Feast’ is sometimes gloomy ‘Oh the famine and the fever’, sometimes sentimental, and in the end - Hiawatha’s hopes for the future of his tribe – foolishly optimistic. Yet as a piece of choral singing, it is often lyrical and frequently stirring, and it makes its points clearly though the effective marrying of words and music. There are good part for three soloists, but the choir does most of the singing.
It is easy to understand why in the years after the first performance of ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’, when Coleridge-Taylor was 23, it and its sequels became the most frequently performed choral works in the UK, with 200 performances in England by 1904. My experience of performing the music in a white British choir probably replicates the experience of most people who sang Hiawatha in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Was Coleridge-Taylor’s black identity ignored by those who performed his music? My recollection is that Miss Wainwright told us that he was a black composer, and this – rather than his musical output - is what is still known to many people in the UK who are interested in musical history. But his upbringing in a white household and his London-based musical education meant that his contemporary role models were Elgar and Dvorak. It’s no surprise that after the success of his first commission, at Elgar’s behest, of a chamber piece for the Three Choirs Festival, his first major work was this cantata for large choir and orchestra. It fitted precisely into the British secular tradition of mixed-voice choral singing, where amateur singers rehearsed and then performed longer choral pieces. Because most people then would consider themselves Christian, the most popular works - Messiah and Elijah - had religious themes, so the evangelising conclusion to ‘Hiawatha’s Departure’ (he recommends that his people accept the white Christian missionaries) would have found easy acceptance by its early performers.
Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 in Croydon, the son of Sierra Leonean doctor, Daniel Taylor, who had studied in London, and Alice Martin, an Englishwoman. Accounts differ but it seems likely that Daniel Taylor returned to Sierra Leone without knowing Alice was pregnant. Alice named the boy Samuel Coleridge after the poet, and they lived for a number of years in her father, Benjamin Holmans’ house. He was a farrier to trade, played the violin and gave the boy lessons. Though the family was not well-off, Samuel’s talent attracted the attention of local sponsors and he entered the Royal College of Music aged 15. By his early 20s his work was being performed, and in total he wrote 82 numbered compositions.
He married a fellow student, a white Londoner, Jessie Walmisley in 1899. Her parents, initially unhappy about the match, were won over by his talent and gentle personality. Already, Coleridge -Taylor ‘s fame had attracted the attention of other prominent black figures, both British and visitors to London. In 1896 he met the US black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and set one of his poems. He became interested in his father’s heritage. Daniel was the descendent of the freed slaves in the US, who were first relocated to Nova Scotia, but at the end of the 18th century were enabled to live in Sierra Leone. Both his US and African roots led him to look for specifically black music to incorporate in his work. His 24 Negro Songs, a set of piano pieces – themes and variations – was published in 1905 but was probably completed before or during his first visit to the US in 1904. Of these eight are African, one, the ‘Bamboula’, is West Indian with the rest African - American folksong /’spirituals’, including ‘Steal Away’ and ‘Deep River’.
In part 2, I want to look at Coleridge-Taylor’s visits to the United States and how they cemented his status as an iconic and representative black figure of his generation. Then by taking a closer look at ‘Hiawatha’ and other works, I’ll consider possibilities for future performances of his work.
Meanwhile, I’m going to recommend three short excerpts as a “way in” to Coleridge- Taylor’s music. ‘Deep River’, an arrangement of part of the piano version in 25 Negro Songs, by three of the Kanneh-Mason family is the first of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_KMY_D9W4M
An excellent two-hour documentary Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his visits to America 1904 -1912 is available on YouTube. I suggest you start with the trailer which includes excerpts of the African-American choir of the Metropolitan A M E Church in Washington DC singing ‘Hiawatha’ and later violinist Rachel Barton Pine playing part of a transcription for violin of his arrangement of ‘Deep River’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP0i3hBsYqs
The only available full recording of ‘Hiawatha’ on CD was made by Welsh National Opera in 1990, conducted by Kenneth Alwyn, with the young Bryn Terfel singing the baritone solo. Listening to that was the first time I’d heard the terrific orchestration. Second-hand copies are available cheaply online. The opening is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmVThSTaMZQ
