Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

To state that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is unique among English composers is, for once, to treat an abused word with propriety. The quality of this uniqueness is naturally the vital part of a centenary reconsideration, and in its definition is discovered a relevance that was formerly less apparent; for the case of Coleridge-Taylor has a direct bearing on present-day attitudes in Britain, if not further afield. Almost 50 years ago, in its notice of ColeridgeTaylor's chamber music, Cobbett's Survey remarked on a 'particularly attractive glow in his harmonic scheme', but also proposed that the music was 'more remarkable for fluency and warmth of feeling than for depth of thought or serious expression'.' Sitting thus in single-minded aesthetic judgment, Dunhill misread the evidence, since among English composers of his time Coleridge-Taylor in some particulars was more distinguished than almost any other for depth of thought and seriousness of expression. In a period of chauvinistic self-satisfaction and virtual isolationism-one aspect of the 'folksong revival'-he deliberately set himself to challenge assumptions within the new-style nationalism, In so doing he spelled out a creed for the future. In reaction to certain abusive racial declarations. he wrote in 1912: 'Personally, I consider myself the equal of any white man who ever lived, and no one could ever change me in that respect; on the other hand, no man reverences worth more than I, irrespective of colour and creed'.2 In 1870 a West African medical student, Daniel Hughes Peter Taylor, was registered at King's College Hospital, London, from which, four years later, he graduated as MRCS. He married an Englishwoman, Alice Holmans,3 by whom he had a son-Samuel Coleridge-born at 15 Theobalds Road, Holborn, on 15 August 1875. At what point, and for what reason, Daniel Taylor left wife and child and returned to Africa is uncertain, but between 1877 and 1882 (and not thereafter) his name appears on the Foreign List of the Medical Directory. Mrs Taylor moved to Croydon, where Samuel was brought up. The careers of creative geniuses develop fortuitously, if not unpredictably, but inevitably within guidelines provided by percipient well-wishers. As a boy Coleridge-Taylor was indebted to Joseph Beckwith, a Croydon musician, who gave him free violin tuition, and Col. H. A. Walters, an amateur musician who took him into his choir at a local Presbyterian church. In due course Walters recognized that his protege was more than ordinarily gifted. Unwilling to see talent wasted, he approached

Aesthetics · Art · Creed · Epistemology · Feeling · Literature · Sociology · Theology · History · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Theater, Performance, and Music History