SIMON WEBB’s Church of England primary school was just round the corner from the home of one of England’s finest composers. Yet he grew up totally unaware of his existence and never heard a note of his music. Was this, the author wonders, because the composer was black?
Born out of wedlock in 1875, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was the son of Alice Martin, a white girl from Holborn, and Daniel Taylor, a black physician from Sierra Leone. His father returned to Africa before his birth, possibly unaware that he had made Alice pregnant.
Samuel was an infant prodigy, supposedly acquiring his first violin at the age of five when the owner of the pawnbrokers where it was on sale was so moved by his playing as to let him have it for free. He went to the Royal College of Music at the age of 15, his fees paid by a wealthy silk merchant who was choirmaster at a Croydon Presbyterian church. Among his earliest compositions, written while still a student and published by Novello, were anthems for choir and organ setting words from Psalms 21 and 81.
Coleridge-Taylor’s best-known work, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, setting part of Henry Longfellow’s epic poem about a native American hero, was given its première at the Royal College of Music under the baton of C. V. Stanford in 1898. It became a favourite of choral societies around the country. Coleridge-Taylor’s subsequent compositions included incidental music for a play about King Herod and for a production of Othello, as well as cantatas (Arts, 15 August) and orchestral and chamber works.
Simon Webb provides a sketch of the composer’s life in this brief book. He suggests that we are more familiar in this country with the black history of the United States than that of the UK, and that Coleridge-Taylor is almost certainly less well known than Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. At least he is no longer forgotten in Croydon. A blue plaque was put up in 1975 on the front wall of the house where he lived in Dagnall Park, in Selhurst. According to the English Heritage website, he was the first black person in Britain to be honoured in this way.
Dr Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews. His latest book is Music of the Night: Religious influences and spiritual resonances in operetta and musical theatre (OUP, 2025).
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: English composer
Simon Webb
The Langley Press £11.99*
(978-1-7390909-7-5)
*information about availability at www.langleypress.co.uk
