FROM FAME to FOOTNOTE

Despite having a multifaceted career as a composer, conductor, violinist and teacher, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) figures only marginally in Western musical history.

Born a mere 42 years after Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, this mixed-race composer (his mother English, his father a Creole from Sierra Leone) gained popular adulation and was critically acclaimed.

Even Elgar described him as ‘far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the younger men’. Dubbed by the press as the ‘African Mahler’, Coleridge-Taylor was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House in 1904, a bold statement at a time when very few black musicians were afforded a similar level of recognition.

Coleridge-Taylor was 15 when, in 1890, he was admitted by principal George Grove to the Royal College of Music (RCM) in his native London. While there, he studied the violin and the piano and had a short period of organ studies before undertaking composition lessons with Charles Villiers Stanford. Importantly, Stanford’s passion for chamber music (evinced in his Piano Quintet and two string quintets) had a profound impact on the young composer.

Coleridge-Taylor wrote prolifically, producing a stream of music for various combinations of instruments and 31 violin pieces in total, accompanied both by piano and by orchestra. His inspiration came from Tchaikovsky, Grieg and, in particular, Dvořák, his ‘first musical love’ (as he wrote in a letter of 1901). These influences can be heard in the Ballade in D minor op.4 (1895) for violin and orchestra and in violin-and-piano works such as Suite de pièces op.3, Two Romantic Pieces op.9 (both 1895), Gipsy Suite op.20, Valse caprice op.23 (both 1896), Violin Sonata in D minor op.28 (1899; for which he was posthumously awarded a Cobbett Prize) and Ballade in C minor op.73 (1907). While some of these works could be described as ‘light music’, his Hiawathan Sketches op.16 (1896) and Four African Dances op.58 (1904) – both for violin and piano – suggest the composer’s appreciation of African American folk music, elements of which he was one of the first to introduce into Western classical music.

By the time he’d graduated from the RCM in 1897 (the year he turned 22), with several works published, the young composer had already made a name for himself, especially with the success of his earliest chamber music work, the Piano Quintet in G minor op.1 (1893), followed by the remarkable Nonet in F minor op.2 (also 1893) for wind, strings and piano and the Fantasiestücke op.5 (1895) for string quartet.

The premiere of his Clarinet Quintet in F sharp minor op.10 (1895) was very well received, the piece described in the Musical Times as ‘an achievement, not merely a “promise”’ and performed by the legendary Joachim Quartet in Berlin in 1897.

The composer at the piano

This body of works provides a fascinating insight into the way that Coleridge-Taylor developed during his studies with Stanford. The music is astonishingly mature, showing he had already become a master. The first performances were a notable success with both public and critics, though reviews tended to begin by discussing his race and colour rather than the music’s original stylistic features.

The violin part of Gipsy Dance, from Coleridge-Taylor’s Gipsy Suite op.20

Although it seemed likely that young Coleridge-Taylor would make his mark as a composer of instrumental music, it was his highly original cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast (1898) that became an international success throughout the English-speaking world, and at the time its popularity was rivalled only by Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The work’s triumph led to three highprofile visits to the US in 1904, 1906 and 1910 which reinforced the composer’s reputation there and seemed to offer him a new surge of creativity. These visits happened at a time when African Americans were suffering from one of the worst periods of political and economic repression since the civil war. As the composer’s prominence captured their imagination, he became a symbol of hope.

Importantly, his rise to fame coincided not only with a time when black activists were giving a voice to African American musicians but also with Dvořák taking up the post of director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York, where he was keen to create a school of music based on American folk music. Being an ardent supporter of the pan- African movement, Coleridge-Taylor was determined to raise awareness of the richness of black music, just as Brahms, Dvořák and Grieg had done for Hungarian, Czech and Norwegian folk music respectively.

The score of Deep River op.59 no.10, transcribed for violin and piano by Maud Powell

IMSLP/COURTESY MAUD PO WELL SOCIETY

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (far left) at the Norfolk Festival in 1910 pictured with (left to right) tenor George Hamlin, Maud Powell, Mrs Arthur Mees, Gertrude Stein, pianist Franklin Bassett and conductor Dr Arthur Mees. Photo by H Godfrey Turner

PHOTO AND SCORE: COURTESY MAUD POWELL SOCIETY

The US tours also gave Coleridge-Taylor a chance to become reacquainted with the American violin pioneer Maud Powell, whose influence was pivotal in the development of violin playing in North America. They first met in November 1898 at Powell’s London debut, when she performed his Gipsy Suite. She included the work in her American recitals in 1901, thus introducing his violin music to the American public. In fact, it is mainly thanks to her that his music has survived through the years.

Interestingly, their stories are similar inasmuch as they both succeeded in the face of extraordinary prejudices – he against black musicians, she against professional female violinists. Also, they were both committed advocates of racial equality and shared a passion for the violin and music of different cultures. Indeed, they played a significant part in the integration of African music and musicians into the emerging American tradition of art music.

HE WAS DETERMINED TO R AISE AWARENESS OF THE RICHNESS OF BL ACK MUSIC, JUST AS BR AHMS, DVOŘ ÁK AND GRIEG HAD DONE FOR HUNGARIAN, CZECH AND NORWEGI A N FOLK MUSIC

Powell bolstered the composer’s efforts to change the perception of African spirituals as having dehumanising qualities and to make them better known to the general public. She was responsible for the violin transcriptions of his original piano works, including Deep River from his groundbreaking set of 24 Negro Melodies op.59 (published 1905). Powell performed that arrangement during her recital at Carnegie Hall in October 1911. In fact, this was the first time in history that a white, classically trained artist had played a spiritual in a concert hall, as previously only primarily black ensembles such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers and artists like Henry Thacker Burleigh, Clarence Cameron White and John Rosamond Johnson had presented them.

The American critic and musicologist Henry Edward Krehbiel hailed Powell’s transcription as ‘the most effective bit of music based on American folk song which has yet been offered to the public’. Importantly, she had the artistic courage to be the first to record Deep River (for the Victor Company, 15 June 1911), thus helping it gain worldwide popularity. This popularity endured, with the work going on to be performed by many concert artists (both black and white), and new arrangements of the spiritual being made by the likes of Jascha Heifetz.

Among Coleridge-Taylor’s larger-scale works for violin and orchestra – such as his gloomy yet virtuosic Ballade in D minor op.4, his Legende op.14 (1893) and his Romance in G major op.39 (1899) – is the Violin Concerto in G minor op.80, dedicated to Powell and conceived in 1910 during the prestigious Norfolk Festival, Connecticut, where Coleridge-Taylor had been appointed to conduct the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in the complete Song of Hiawatha op.30 and the premiere of his ‘rhapsodic dance’ The Bamboula op.75 (1910). He was the first black conductor to direct the then exclusively white orchestra, his programme preceded by Fritz Kreisler performing Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole.

The concerto could be seen as a personal story written for a friend – in fact, Powell playfully claimed that it was ‘Taylor-made’ for her. Having in 1911 refused to pay $1,000 to the publishers Novello for the privilege of giving the US premiere of the Elgar Violin Concerto (because she didn’t think it was worth it), Powell – who had previously introduced American audiences to major concertos such as those by Bruch, Dvořák, Lalo, Saint-Saëns, Sibelius and Tchaikovsky – instead gave the money to Coleridge-Taylor.

It is worth noting that the composer did not attempt to ‘feminise’ his writing style according to the gender stereotypes of the day. Although lyricism pervades the work, its technical difficulties are considerable; the first and last movements display virtuosity, heroism and power, key traits once reserved for male virtuosos. The work was originally centred on the spirituals Keep Me from Sinking Down and Many Thousands Gone for his slow movement and the well-loved American folk tune Yankee Doodle as the basis for the finale. However, when in May 1911 Powell saw the piano version, she found the first and last movements rather ‘sketchy and unsatisfactory’. In an entirely rewritten new version, which Coleridge-Taylor considered ‘a hundred times better’, he omitted the spirituals. After receiving the final draft, Powell described it as ‘pretty’, ‘melodious’ and ‘like a bouquet of flowers’. Moreover, she insisted that the original second movement should not be destroyed and persuaded Coleridge-

Taylor to arrange the spiritual Keep Me from Sinking Down as a separate piece. She performed it as an encore after the concerto’s premiere on 4 June 1912 at the Norfolk Festival, Connecticut. The work’s eventful history encompassed a number of anxiety-inducing misfortunes that befell the manuscript itself.

First, the premiere was almost postponed as the full score and orchestral parts sank with the Titanic and had to be recopied post-haste. Secondly, the return journey of the score and orchestral parts was delayed owing to mislabelling with the incorrect address, causing great anxiety to Coleridge-Taylor as the British premiere was confirmed for October 1912 and the parts were due to arrive in England some time in September. Despite all the tensions and pressures, the US premiere was a success. A critic from Musical America of 15 June 1912, commented: ‘The Coleridge-Taylor work is fascinating, if not great music. It contains interesting melodic material and piquant rhythms, and it is gratefully written for the solo instrument. Miss Powell played it with all the consummate artistry of which she is mistress.’

This would be the last violin concerto Powell introduced to American audiences and the last music that Coleridge-Taylor ever composed. He was unable to conduct its premiere in the US owing to the restraints of his schedule and was not present when Henry Wood conducted the British premiere at the Proms with soloist Arthur Catterall on 8 October 1912, having died a mere five weeks previously – two months before he was due to conduct it himself during a much-anticipated trip to Germany. During his final moments, he reportedly was ‘conducting’ the work – which he had heard only once in a private performance in Croydon on the same day as the premiere, in which he had accompanied violinist William J. Read – with a hallucinatory orchestra.

The concerto provides an interesting study that could encompass a discussion on gender, race, originality and whether African American influences are indeed present. To place the work’s creation in context, it is important to mention that at a time when violin virtuoso identity was maledominated, Coleridge-Taylor collaborated with female violinists including not only Powell but also the Irish violinist Mary Dickinson-Auner and British violinists Isabella Donkersley and Kitty Woolley. Whether this happened out of necessity remains unknown. However, that Powell was the concerto’s dedicatee implies that Coleridge-Taylor admired her and the other women’s artistry. Moreover, at a time when black musicians were not accepted as equals, the public’s and critics’ approbation was important; by creating such a large-scale piece, Coleridge-Taylor broke the constraints of a racially prejudiced field.

At the same time, the concerto was compared to those of his contemporaries Dvořák and Elgar, implying that he overtly relied on their concertos as models. Indeed, there are structural, harmonic and melodic similarities between Dvořák’s and Coleridge-Taylor’s violin concertos. For example, in both compositions the solo violin’s entrance resembles a quasicadenza accompanied by the orchestra, and triplets are an important motif, as are running arpeggiated semiquavers (s).

Moreover, Coleridge-Taylor’s first-movement cadenza (accompanied by timpani and bass on aD pedal) has a concept similar to the one from Elgar’s Violin Concerto, which was completed two years earlier. The second movements of these latter two concertos display melodic similarities, while a playful, romp-like atmosphere pervades their third movements.

However, despite these resemblances to the Dvořák and the Elgar, Coleridge-Taylor did add his own signature: compared with the Dvořák, his concerto has a more rhapsodic air; and certain aspects of the African American musical language (the blue notes, mixing of major and minor modes and the use of the flattened 7th) are testimony to his own musical heritage; also the three-note motif in the opening theme is present in all three movements and ties them together.

Importantly, the concerto’s memorable melodies, breathtaking orchestration and harmonic richness, coupled with elements of spirituals that had been completely unexplored in previous violin works, surely demonstrate Coleridge-Taylor’s ability to create an original work. The Proms performance was a success, the Musical News (July 1912) claiming that the concerto ‘may turn out to be a work of permanent importance to violinists’. However, after the last full performance of the concerto in England, in 1913 in Bournemouth, and Powell’s final US performance at Carnegie Hall in 1917, the work was rarely performed. Perhaps the fact that Coleridge-Taylor opposed an English performing fee and the fact that the piece appeared shortly before the First World War contributed to its rapid fall into obscurity.

HIS VIOLIN CONCERTO WAS A SUCCESS, A CRITIC CLAIMING IT ‘M AY TURN OUT TO BE A WORK OF PERMANENT IMPORTA NCE TO VIOLINISTS’

A portrait autographed ‘To Miss Maud Powell, with every good wish. July 1901’

At present, recordings of Coleridge-Taylor’s violin and chamber works are few and far between. It is unfortunate that this prolific composer (of 82 works with opus numbers and quite a sizeable collection of works without numerical ordering) has been considerably undervalued by performers and scholars.

Missing from modern histories of music are discussions about his pioneering role in transforming African musical heritage into an art form, his progressive collaboration with women violinists, his inspirational role for future generations of black violinists, composers and conductors, as well as his considerable contribution to the 20th-century violin and chamber literature. While implicit bias and racism have silenced his voice for too long, I believe his violin and chamber music deserves more recognition by historians, performers and audiences in order to redress the neglect that he still endures within the larger framework of contemporary culture in Britain and America.