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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always bore the weight of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the best-known UK musicians of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s identity was cloaked in the long shadows of the past.

An Inaugural Recording

Not long ago, I contemplated these memories as I made arrangements to produce the first-ever recording of her 1936 piano concerto. With its impassioned harmonies, soulful lyricism, and valiant rhythms, Avril’s work will offer audiences deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer born in 1903 – envisioned her world as a woman of colour.

Past and Present

However about shadows. It can take a while to acclimate, to perceive forms as they actually appear, to tell reality from misrepresentation, and I had been afraid to address the composer’s background for a period.

I deeply hoped the composer to be a reflection of her father. To some extent, that held. The idyllic English tones of Samuel’s influence can be heard in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). However, one need only review the headings of her father’s compositions to understand how he heard himself as not just a standard-bearer of British Romantic style as well as a advocate of the African heritage.

This was where parent and child began to differ.

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

Family Background

During his studies at the prestigious music college, the composer – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – turned toward his heritage. Once the poet of color Paul Laurence Dunbar came to London in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the following year adapted his verses for an opera, Dream Lovers. Then came the choral work that established his reputation: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an global success, especially with African Americans who felt shared pride as American society assessed his work by the quality of his art rather than the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper his activism. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the African American intellectual this influential figure and saw a range of talks, such as the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was an activist until the end. He sustained relationships with pioneers of civil rights including the scholar and this leader, gave addresses on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the White House in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so high as a creative artist that it will endure.” He died in that year, aged 37. However, how would the composer have thought of his daughter’s decision to work in this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Daughter of Famous Composer gives OK to S African Bias,” declared a title in the community journal Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. When asked to explain, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “as a concept” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by well-meaning people of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her parent’s beliefs, or raised in segregated America, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had shielded her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a British passport,” she remarked, “and the government agents never asked me about my ethnicity.” Therefore, with her “fair” appearance (according to the magazine), she floated within European circles, buoyed up by their acclaim for her renowned family member. She delivered a lecture about her father’s music at the educational institution and directed the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, featuring the heroic third movement of her composition, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” Even though a confident pianist herself, she never played as the soloist in her piece. On the contrary, she invariably directed as the leader; and so the segregated ensemble played under her baton.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. However, by that year, the situation collapsed. When government agents became aware of her African heritage, she had to depart the land. Her citizenship offered no defense, the British high commissioner advised her to leave or be jailed. She came home, embarrassed as the extent of her inexperience was realized. “The lesson was a hard one,” she lamented. Increasing her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her ill-fated Jet interview, a year after her unceremonious exit from the country.

A Familiar Story

As I sat with these shadows, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of being British until it’s challenged – which recalls African-descended soldiers who defended the British in the World War II and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,