Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life
Jeffrey Green
978 1 84893 161 9: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 84893 162 6
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) was one of Britain’s most popular and acclaimed composers. The illegitimate child of an African doctor, Coleridge-Taylor managed to escape his humble roots by studying composition at the Royal College of Music, where he won a scholarship in 1893. Though he composed mainly for piano and violin, his Song of Hiawatha was performed nationwide for choir and orchestra to great critical acclaim. He died from pneumonia at the age of thirty-seven.
Green’s study is more than a biography of an Anglo-African composer. Using a wide range of public and private records, this extensively researched work becomes a social history based around an artist who lived at the height of British imperialism. The first comprehensive study of Coleridge-Taylor’s life for almost a century, it reveals how class-ridden Britain could embrace even the most unlikely of cultural icons.
Sample pages
Readership
Theatre Studies, Musicology and Social History
Contents
Introduction
1 The Early Years
2 The Royal College of Musuc
3 The Promising Young Composer
4 The Wedding Feast
5 'A Sentiment Prevalent Here'
6 Intensifying the Effort
7 The International Star
8 A Stalwart Member of the Profession
9 A 'Definite Place for the Negro in the World's History'
10 A Tale of Old Japan
11 Requiem
12 The Legacy
Postscript
Appendix 1 The Song of Hiawatha
Appendix 2 Further Reading
Reviews
'One comes away from this study with a new sense of the composer, his colleagues and supporters, and the social and political environment in which he lived. Recommended.'
– D -R de Lerma, CHOICE
