It's one thing to regret the absence from music racks of works by culty, fashionable-but-never-truly-popular composers from the past (Searle; Fricker; Ruggles; et-many-ceteras)... it's another thing entirely to wonder how the music a composer feted in his lifetime by no less a figure than the president of the United States (Theodore Roosevelt; in 1904) could vanish almost completely from view within a few decades of his death.
Who then is this missing composer?
Samuel Coleridge Taylor was the (probably) illegitimate son of a Sierra Leonese doctor, Daniel (Peter Hughes) Taylor, & a distinctly mysterious Englishwoman, identified as Alice Taylor (nee Holmans) on SCT's birth certificate. The confusion over SCT's mother's identity seems to have been (basically) deliberate, & designed to avoid the scar of illegitimacy in turn-of-the-century England... with the unfortunate result that (a hundred years on) we can't even be certain that the woman who raised SCT (Alice Hare (Martin); later the wife of one George Evans) was actually his mother (although this seems to be the most likely alternative).
What does seem unlikely in the extreme is the story (strongly suggested by the wording of the birth certificate; & reported as fact by the composer's first biographer, W C Berwick Sayers (Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - Musician: His Life & Letters - 1915; rev.1927)) that the composer's parents were ever married....
This necessarily hazy biographical sketch is based on Geoffrey Self (The Hiawatha Man - The Life & Work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - Scolar Press, 1995), by far the most valuable study of the composer & his music currently available. One of the book's most remarkable achievements is the degree Self actually manages to unravel the mystery surrounding the composer's birth; with results which are more than plausible... about as good as we're likely to get at this remove, I suppose.
(It's probably worth noting that even the composer's daughter (Avril (born Gwendolen... the reason for the name change is explained in her book) Coleridge-Taylor) seems to have known little about her grandparents: the biographical sketch in her study The Heritage of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (Dennis Dobson, 1979) is refreshingly unclear about the subject... the only part of this valuable memoir which is. Avril believes that the character of Alice Hare was a biographical fabrication by Sayers, for example... which rather leaves a mystery over the woman Avril calls "Grannie" (from p.95 onwards): is this really SCT's supposed mother, Mrs Alice Evans (nee Hare Martin)?
(Compounding the mystery further: from quoted material - I've been unable to access a copy of her privately printed A Memory Sketch of Personal Reminiscences of My Husband, Genius & Musician (1943) - the composer's widow, Jessie Coleridge-Taylor does seem to have been familiar with SCT's mother; but the republished extracts offer little to clarify who exactly she was)
It seems fairly clear that the composer never knew his father (indeed: Taylor may well have returned to Africa before SCT was born); & although the boy seems to have had good relations with his stepfather, SCT's musical training was clearly supervised by the proverbial old soldier, one Col. Herbert A Walters....
(Avril mentions that Col. Walters & the boy's father may have been friends... there's probably no way of knowing for sure; but the responsibility Walters took in looking after SCT does appear greater than one would expect from a disinterested stranger, no matter how kindly)
Apart from (no doubt) boring people rigid with his stories of derring-do from the frontiers of Empire, Col. Walters was an amateur musician as well as honorary choirmaster of St George's Church, Croydon; & it was as a choirboy that the young SCT first achieved prominence. He also received violin lessons from Joseph Beckwith, a local orchestral musician....
What follows is the first of a number of totally gratuitous asides, I'm afraid:
The English musical world of the last years of the 19th century was a place of turmoil, frustration & exhilaration... if the old insult "a land without music" had ever held any validity, it had certainly been swamped by the torrent of musical talent which has continued, more-or-less, to the present day. The spread of this talent was anything but neat, though: the (musical) nation was strongly divided on geographical & sectarian lines, so the popular figures of the north were the (mostly) cantata (often Catholic) composers such as Elgar & Parry; while the fashionable figures of the capital were the (mostly) concert (usually Anglican) composers like Sullivan.
(A modern audience brought up with a broader knowledge of Elgar's music of this time - not to mention the rather more inventive genius he showed in writing the Savoy operettas with Henry Gilbert - may find it difficult to believe how seriously Arthur Sullivan's concert scores were taken at this time; but in the years before his death, the composer (1842-1900) was very much the elder statesman of London music... under these circumstances, Sullivan's patronage of SCT's music (see below) was a significant plume in the young composer's hat)
SCT's own teacher, Charles Villiers Stanford was one of the few to have successfully bridged this divide before Elgar smashed it down a few years later. A century on, it seems fairly easy to view the split in terms of the roughly contemporary cricketing division between the players (i.e., the working-class professionals) & the gentlemen (the wealthy amateurs), who often (literally) had to enter via separate gates to the same ground: this image has the side-effect of painting Elgar as the Dr W G Grace of English music, which seems to me (at least) strangely appropriate; though i doubt Neville Cardus (possibly the greatest writer on both music & cricket of his time) would have approved....
(I'm equally sure that Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) - a leading suffragette as well as a successful London composer - would find herself seriously bemused to be herded amongst the gentlemen of her time; but for the purposes of this analogy, that's exactly what she was)
A large part of the division was educational: Elgar (like Havergal Brian after him) received little formal musical education... he essentially learned his trade on the job (mostly as a orchestral musician & teacher). Had it not been for Col. Walters's intervention, SCT's musical future - if it existed at all - would have led him slowly through this tradesmen's entrance... however, the colonel arranged an interview with Charles Grove, head of the Royal College of Music (& original editor/publisher of the Grove Encyclopaedia of Music); which resulted in SCT being accepted by the RCM in 1890: originally as a violin student; & graduating to composition (with Stanford) in 1892.
This achievement (& the importance of Walters's role in it) should not underestimated: apart from bringing SCT in touch with his lifelong mentor (Stanford) & the technical expertise (a SCT trademark throughout his career) the school gave him, having successfully attended the RCM gave the young composer a significant street credibility in the London concert scene. Such a benefit couldn't make a career on its own of course (any more than the lack of such formal training could prevent a musical genius like Elgar storming the London (musical) barricades); but it did bring significant advantages to the young SCT: most of the early performances of SCT's music - including the premiere of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast - were either RCM concerts or had a significant RCM input... usually in the form of RCM students as performers.
(For the record: SCT's first significant concert as a composer/performer was in Croydon on 9 October 1893; & included three songs, a clarinet sonata & a piano quintet by the young composer. Although this was not officially an RCM concert, it should be noted that all of the performers included in the program were RCM students)
The RCM also gave SCT his wife (Jessie Fleetwood Walmisley... their marriage took place - distinctly over her family's objections - on 30 December 1899) & one of his closest composer friends, the ill-fated William Hurlstone (1876-1906)....
A shadowy presence in all of the recent biographies (except Avril CT's; where she gets something of a rough ride), there's no doubt that Jessie Coleridge-Taylor was (in the old gangster movie vernacular) a class act: she stood up to her family to marry SCT; & (probably) also helped make him acceptable to late Victorian & Edwardian society. Self likens her (probably not inappropriately) to the formidable Lady Alice (Elgar); although she may have lacked CAE's sure critical sense about her husband's compositions.
Hurlstone - like Butterworth (&, of course, SCT himself) - is one of English music's many what-might-have-beens: a talented pianist as well as a composer, his small handful of compositions - which include a number of chamber works as well as a fine, romantic Piano Concerto - are rarely heard today. Music by the two young composers regularly appeared in the same concerts (Avril notes that the orchestra for a concert on 6 March 1896 - which included 3 movements from SCT's Symphony in A minor as well as the Hurlstone Piano Concerto (with the composer as soloist) - featured one Gustav von Holst on trombone & (Ralph) Vaughan Williams (on triangle!)); & the two men fed off each other's (musical) loves: for Hurlstone, Brahms; for SCT, Dvorak. Hurlstone's death (in 1906) was a bitter blow for SCT... as, indeed, it was for English music....
SCT's first publication was a Te Deum, privately printed in 1890... the next year, Novellos published the first of a series of anthems by SCT (In Thee, O Lord), forging a link between the composer & publisher which would continue for the rest of SCT's life. While at the RCM SCT also received the Lesley Alexander composition prize: twice (in 1895 & 1896).
By the time he left the RCM in 1897, SCT was, as they say, on a roll....
You'll note that I have yet to make reference to SCT's race in all this biographical jockeying for position... that's because at this point in his career, its role was distinctly ambiguous. Racism was certainly present in turn-of-the-century England; but unlike now, it was more inclined to reveal itself in anti-Semitic or -Catholic (particularly Irish Catholic) forms than in purely black & white terms. One thing should be acknowledged, though: born & raised in suburban London, the young SCT undoubtedly received a different view of racism than he would have had he been brought up in the US (or England's African, Australian or Caribbean colonies, for that matter)... racism has always thrived best in a climate of fear; & while SCT's skin color made him an obvious novelty in Victorian England, it wasn't generally going to paint him as the kind of social threat (for want of a better word) that being a Jew or a Catholic was thought to be in this Anglican-Christian society....
(A number of writers (including Avril CT) mention an incident concerning SCT & his teacher, Charles Stanford, during the composer's RCM years: after hearing SCT being abused by a fellow student on account of his race; Stanford told the offending student that SCT had:
"... more music in his little finger than [the student] did in the whole of his body".
(Only Percy M Young in his short Musical Times sketch on SCT (CXVI, 1975; ps 703-705) draws the obvious inference from this, though: as a member of what generations of English politicians euphemistically called "The Irish Problem", Stanford would have been well aware of the racism inherent in Victorian England)
That doesn't mean that SCT's childhood was anything but difficult: his childhood nickname of "Coaley" (an obvious insult given the child's name & skin color) was hardly friendly; & as an adult, the composer's almost legendary shyness seems to have more than a touch of the battle-scarred about it... but these scars - assuming they existed - would have been about more things than simply race; & were drawn also from his family's poverty; as well as the ambiguity over his birth....
(One can also, unfortunately, point to SCT's own music to show how questionable his own sense of racial justice was at this time. How anyone raised under the circumstances that SCT was could set a line like:
"... the Jews, the tribe accursed" (Hiawatha's Departure; Novello vocal score, p.171);
(... without at least some sense of bitter irony is beyond me)
During his mature years, SCT's race fairly obviously affected the way audiences heard his music (even when meant in a complimentary sense, describing the lushly romantic Ballade in A minor (1898) as possessing "barbaric gaiety" (quoted from a contemporary review by Avril CT, p.30; see also below) clearly has more to do with the color of the composer's skin than the notes on the page)... on the other hand: in England, at least (his place in US-American music will be dealt with separately), the novelty of being black in a overwhelmingly white society could also be something of an asset - as indeed it would be for Paul Robeson a generation later...
... but (having said all this), SCT's political awareness clearly
developed
early: in 1896 (while SCT was still a student at the RCM), the
African-American
poet & novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) visited London.
His
meeting with SCT - probably inevitable under the circumstances (in
later years,
SCT's distinguished presence in the English music scene made the
composer a
virtual magnet for visiting African-American business-people,
politicians &
lecturers) - triggered a series of collaborations between the two
artists;
which including the song collection Seven African Romances
(1897) &
an opera, Dream Lovers (1898)....
(A few words about these two works may be useful here:
(The African Romances - an album of seven short songs published by Augener's - may be unambitious; but it is tuneful & heartfelt. Not a song-cycle in any real sense of the word & sublimely middle-class (music for the industrial bourgeoisie, as Marx would have it), SCT's music was drawing-room English with exotic overtones... hardly revolutionary (unlike the later Twenty-Four Negro Melodies; see below); but well worthy of affection.
(Dream Lovers was more ambitious; if (possibly) less successful.
(As with most English composers - & not just of his own generation - the dream of being an opera composer was strong in SCT... he made a number of attempts of writing the great English opera; & while all apart from Thelma (1907-9; now listed as lost) were performed during the composer's lifetime, none remained in the repertoire for long. Dream Lovers (subtitled "an Operatic Romance by Paul Laurence Dunbar and S. Coleridge-Taylor") was the first of these attempts; & (if the vocal score - "copyright 1898 by Boosey & Co" - found in the stacks of the Sydney Conservatorium library is any indication) a moderately promising one at that.
(The prologue (which i once managed to MIDI... poorly; & no: you can't hear it) is light & waltzing; although (as with the African Romances) the opera suffers from Dunbar's distinctly undramatic text, which is too often more like Gilbert than da Ponte in the way it deals with (dismisses?) a Moroccan prince & his friend finding true happiness with a pair of sisters in a prologue & six numbers. The action essentially consists of singers (singularly; or in groups) walking on stage & singing the plot at the audience... all Dunbar needed was the pirates of Morocco singing Quietly, quietly, not a sound! at the top of their voices to make the absurdity complete.
(Still: SCT manages to set the text with a typically effortless grace; to create a short (probably twenty to twenty-five minutes in all), sometimes rather too sweet wish-fulfillment piece, with enough inherent musical interest to suggest that (a century on) Dream Lovers might still be worth a concert performance or a recording outing or two. Any takers?)
In 1900, SCT was a delegate at the first Pan-African Conference in London. The young composer also read extensively on the African-American experience; & was predictably impressed by the biography of Frederick Douglass & the writings of Booker T Washington & W E B DuBois...
... but SCT was English, not US-American; & (at this stage of his life, at least), SCT's view of the kind of post-slavery racial hatreds which marred US-American society seems to have been limited to that derived from writings such as these. A more visceral sense of racial injustice seems to have only appeared after the composer's three trips to the US (1904; 1906 & 1910); with the result that these trips became the catalyst which changed SCT from an English composer proud of his African heritage to a more overtly African-English composer.
(It's probably worth stressing at this point that SCT's view of his racial heritage seems to have been largely African-American... he seems to have had little interest in the situation - not always positive - in England's African colonies; & there's no evidence to suggest that SCT ever considered travelling to the continent itself.
(William Tortolano's Samuel Coleridge-Taylor -
Anglo-Black
Composer, 1875-1912 (The Scarecrow Press, 1977) takes a distinctly
more
militant view of the role of race in SCT's career. While I'm not sure
that I
can accept Tortolano's basic premise - his view of SCT's racial
awareness often
sounds somewhat anachronistic; & seems to reflect the Scott Joplin or William Grant
Still
experience more than SCT's - the book offers an interesting insight
into SCT's
role in US-American music; & the extraordinary response the
composer
inspired on his three US tours. The introductory studies of three of
SCT's major
works - the Hiawatha series; the Twenty-Four Negro Melodies
&
the Violin Concerto - written, apparently, from the score only
- are
loving & useful.
(Stoeckel's letter to Sayers regarding the final US tour (extensively quoted by Tortolano) reveals a number of things - it's our source for the New York description of SCT as the African (sometimes quoted as Black) Mahler, for example - but Stoeckel's discomfort at having to describe the racial situation in the US is palpable. After stressing the great support had SCT received from the NY musicians (he proudly points out that only one chorus member & a single soloist had refused to perform under the visitor because of his race), Stoeckel adds, sadly:
"I suppose that it is difficult for you in England & Europe generally to understand the unfortunate & unreasonable prejudice which still exists against Africans in the United States; but the fact is here, we must face it & do our best to overcome it, & I know of no incident, in my life at least, that has done so much to dissipate this feeling as the visit of Mr Coleridge-Taylor to this country in 1910." (p.122)
(This quote clearly establishes Stoeckel's belief (at least) that the racial situation in the US was worse than it was in England... on the other hand, the case of an London debating society running a meeting on the topic "The Negro Problem in North America" shows that racial stupidity was not restricted to the US-Americans; & was (& is) regrettably universal. SCT's sharply witty response to this debate (published by the Croydon Guardian; 15 February 1912) is quoted in full by both Self & Tortolano)
to continue: hit the link to "Barbaric gaiety".
to return to the Samuel Coleridge Taylor cover sheet, just hit the link here.
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