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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually felt the pressure of her father’s reputation. As the daughter of the renowned Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the prominent UK composers of the 1900s, Avril’s name was cloaked in the deep shadows of history.

A World Premiere

In recent months, I contemplated these shadows as I got ready to produce the first-ever recording of the composer’s piano concerto from 1936. Featuring emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, this piece will grant new listeners valuable perspective into how she – a composer during war originating from the early 1900s – conceived of her reality as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It requires time to adapt, to see shapes as they actually appear, to distinguish truth from distortion, and I was reluctant to confront Avril’s past for some time.

I deeply hoped the composer to be following in her father’s footsteps. In some ways, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of her father’s impact can be observed in numerous compositions, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). Yet it suffices to examine the headings of her father’s compositions to understand how he viewed himself as not just a standard-bearer of British Romantic style as well as a representative of the African heritage.

It was here that Samuel and Avril began to differ.

White America evaluated Samuel by the excellence of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the child of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – turned toward his African roots. When the Black American writer this literary figure arrived in England in that era, the aspiring artist actively pursued him. He set this literary work to music and the following year incorporated his poetry for an opera, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Drawing from the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, notably for Black Americans who felt indirect honor as white America assessed his work by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the colour of his skin.

Activism and Politics

Success did not reduce his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he attended the First Pan African Conference in the UK where he encountered the Black American thinker WEB Du Bois and saw a range of talks, such as the mistreatment of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner until the end. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights like Du Bois and this leader, spoke publicly on racial equality, and even discussed matters of race with the American leader while visiting to the presidential residence in the early 1900s. Regarding his compositions, reminisced Du Bois, “he made his mark so high as a composer that it will long be remembered.” He died in that year, aged 37. But what would her father have reacted to his offspring’s move to travel to this country in the that decade?

Conflict and Policy

“Offspring of Renowned Musician expresses approval to S African Bias,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. Apartheid “seems to me the appropriate course”, Avril told Jet. When asked to explain, she revised her statement: she did not support with this policy “fundamentally” and it “should be allowed to resolve itself, overseen by well-meaning residents of all races”. Were the composer more aligned to her father’s politics, or from segregated America, she might have thought twice about apartheid. However, existence had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she stated, “and the authorities did not inquire me about my race.” Therefore, with her “light” skin (as Jet put it), she traveled among the Europeans, supported by their admiration for her late father. She delivered a lecture about her parent’s compositions at the Cape Town university and conducted the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in Johannesburg, including the bold final section of her composition, subtitled: “In memory of my Father.” While a confident pianist personally, she never played as the soloist in her concerto. Instead, she invariably directed as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra played under her baton.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, things fell apart. When government agents learned of her mixed background, she was forced to leave the land. Her UK document didn’t protect her, the diplomatic official urged her to go or be jailed. She returned to England, feeling great shame as the scale of her naivety was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she expressed. Increasing her disgrace was the 1955 publication of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her sudden departure from the country.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these memories, I felt a familiar story. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – that brings to mind troops of color who served for the UK during the global conflict and made it through but were denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation,