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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually experienced the pressure of her parent’s legacy. As the offspring of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent British artists of the early 20th century, Avril’s reputation was shrouded in the long shadows of bygone eras.

A World Premiere

Earlier this year, I contemplated these legacies as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of Avril’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, Avril’s work will grant new listeners fascinating insight into how the composer – a composer during war born in 1903 – conceived of her world as a female composer of color.

Shadows and Truth

But here’s the thing about the past. One needs patience to acclimate, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to tell reality from distortion, and I was reluctant to face her history for some time.

I had so wanted her to be her father’s daughter. To some extent, she was. The pastoral English palettes of parental inspiration can be detected in several pieces, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the titles of her parent’s works to see how he heard himself as both a flag bearer of British Romantic style and also a representative of the African diaspora.

It was here that Samuel and Avril seemed to diverge.

American society evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his music instead of the his ethnicity.

Parental Heritage

As a student at the renowned institution, the composer – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – started to lean into his heritage. At the time the poet of color the renowned Dunbar visited the UK in 1897, the young musician eagerly sought him out. He composed the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the subsequent year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Inspired by this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, this composition was an international hit, particularly among the Black community who felt vicarious pride as the majority assessed his work by the quality of his art instead of the his race.

Activism and Politics

Success failed to diminish his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the African American intellectual WEB Du Bois and observed a variety of discussions, such as the oppression of the Black community there. He was a campaigner until the end. He kept connections with trailblazers for equality including this intellectual and Booker T Washington, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even discussed matters of race with the US President during an invitation to the White House in that year. As for his music, reminisced Du Bois, “he wrote his name so notably as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, in his thirties. But what would the composer have reacted to his offspring’s move to be in the African nation in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist expresses approval to apartheid system,” appeared as a heading in the community journal Jet magazine. The system “appeared to me the appropriate course”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with the system “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to work itself out, guided by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. Were the composer more attuned to her father’s politics, or from segregated America, she may have reconsidered about the policy. However, existence had sheltered her.

Background and Inexperience

“I hold a English document,” she stated, “and the government agents failed to question me about my background.” So, with her “porcelain-white” skin (as Jet put it), she moved alongside white society, lifted by their acclaim for her late father. She presented about her father’s music at the University of Cape Town and directed the national orchestra in that location, programming the inspiring part of her composition, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” Even though a skilled pianist personally, she did not perform as the lead performer in her work. Instead, she invariably directed as the maestro; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “may foster a shift”. However, by that year, things fell apart. Once officials learned of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the nation. Her UK document offered no defense, the British high commissioner urged her to go or face arrest. She came home, feeling great shame as the magnitude of her naivety became clear. “The realization was a difficult one,” she lamented. Increasing her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

As I sat with these shadows, I perceived a familiar story. The narrative of holding UK citizenship until it’s challenged – that brings to mind troops of color who served for the English during the second world war and made it through but were denied their due compensation. Along with the Windrush era,