Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

This article is about the English composer. This is not to be confused with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge .

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1905)

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (born  August 15, 1875 in London , †  September 1, 1912 there ) was an English composer .

Life

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in Croydon, London , to a doctor from Sierra Leone and an English mother. The father soon left England, however, and left his wife and child there. The young Samuel showed high musical talent at an early age and performed as a violinist at the age of 8. In 1890 he became a student at the Royal College of Music and in 1891 his Anthem In Thee O Lord appeared in print. In 1892 Stanford accepted him as a composition student, in 1893 he received a scholarship. In the same year his piano quintet, parts of a clarinet sonata and songs were on the program at a chamber concert in Croydon. In 1898 Coleridge-Taylor himself was employed as a violin teacher at the Royal College. In 1899 he married Jessie Walmisley, one of his students, although her parents had reservations about his dark skin. The marriage resulted in a son (Hiawatha, 1900–1980) and a daughter (Avril, 1903–1998), both of whom were musicians.

Coleridge-Taylor, who became increasingly known internationally as a composer, and at the same time increasingly dealt with his paternal ancestry (he worked with the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar at an early age ), also became a leading figure among African-Americans in the USA . As early as 1901, a 200-member choir called the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society was founded in Washington, DC . In 1904, 1906 and 1910 concert tours took him to the USA himself. In 1904 he became the conductor of the Handel Society ( Handel Society) in England . In addition, there was increasing teaching activities. At the time of his death from pneumonia at the age of only 37, he was a senior lecturer at the Croydon Conservatory and a professor of composition at Trinity College of Music, the Crystal Palace School of Art and Music, and the Guildhall School for Music .

plant

Coleridge-Taylor attempted to develop a new style in Western art music based on African roots. In a program note he wrote for his 24 Negro Melodies op.59:

"What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk music, Dvorak for the Bohemian, and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro Melodies."

"What Brahms did for Hungarian, Dvorak for Bohemian and Grieg for Norwegian folk music, I tried for these 'Negro Melodies'."

However, he did not succeed in real emancipation from the European musical tradition in his short lifetime; his works are committed to romanticism and their tonal language is undisguisedly under the influence of Dvořák .

Coleridge-Taylor's greatest compositional success was probably the cantata Hiawatha's Wedding-feast (1898), which was often performed by choirs in England during his lifetime and at times reached the popularity of Handel's Messiah or Mendelssohn's Elias . The Hiawatha epic also included the compositions The Death of Minehaha , Overture to The Song of Hiawatha and Hiawatha's Departure . He also wrote u. a. an (early) symphony, a violin concerto (the American premiere of which was delayed because the voices were on board the Titanic ), chamber music (e.g. a nonet, a piano quintet, Six Negro Folksongs for piano trio, African Romances for violin) as well as anthems.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Coleridge-Taylor website at AfriClassical.com, with information on life, work and discography (English)

Web links

Commons : Samuel Coleridge-Taylor  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Sheet music and audio files by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in the International Music Score Library Project