Samuel Coleridge Taylor is not the person you might be thinking he is: an African-English composer and violin prodigy. Plus, a related poem.
The date is August 15th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Samuel Coleridge Taylor, African-English composer.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s Creole father, Dr. Daniel Taylor, was visiting London to complete a course of study. While there his father became involved with a London woman named Alice Hare. When Dr. Taylor’s program had ended he returned to Sierra Leone, leaving behind Alice. Dr. Taylor never knew that Alice had become pregnant and it’s possible even Alice didn’t know until he was gone. Alice did not attempt to contact Dr. Taylor to tell him the news and gave birth to a boy in 1875. Alice named their son Samuel Coleridge Taylor, after the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor appears to have grown up in a large loving family. Alice and newborn Sam moved in with Alice’s father and his family. Little Sam was surrounded by doting aunts and grandparents, many of whom were musically inclined. His grandfather was a decent violinist and taught Samuel how to play.
Coleridge Taylor quickly surpasses his grandfather in music ability and his grandfather, quite proudly, paid for Taylor to have private violin lessons.
When he turned 15, the extended family rallied around Coleridge Taylor and helped him get into the Royal College of Music. Perhaps the charge was led by his grandfather?
Coleridge Taylor then had a successful career as a professional violinist and conductor for a few years and began to compose his own music, which is where he thrived.
By 1896, aged 21, Coleridge Taylor had the beginnings of a respectable reputation as a composer. During his career, he gained enough notoriety to be received by President Theodore Roosevelt while on tour in America in 1904. He also met with W.E.B DuBois and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar while in the States and was a representative at the First Pan-African Conference in 1900.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor greatest work was his collection The Song of Hiawatha, based on the work of the same name by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (You can get a taste of it here.)
Coleridge Taylor passed away unexpectedly at the age of 37 in 1912 of pneumonia. His wife, an accomplished musician in her own right, and his two children Hiawatha and Gwendolyn Avril survived him. Both of his children would go on to have successful careers in music.
Coleridge Taylor was not compensated very well despite the popularity of his music. Upon his death his family learned they were not going to receive any royalties for his work. When word got out, King George V bestowed an annual £100 pension to Mrs. Coleridge Taylor.
Taking heed of the unfairness shown to Coleridge Taylor, composers and musicians banded together to form the Performing Rights Society to vie for protection of their intellectual property.
Excerpt from The Song of Hiawatha, “Introduction”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
…Ye who love a nation’s legends,
Love the ballads of a people,
That like voices from afar off
Call to us to pause and listen,
Speak in tones so plain and childlike,
Scarcely can the ear distinguish
Whether they are sung or spoken;–
Listen to this Indian Legend,
To this Song of Hiawatha!
Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple,
Who have faith in God and Nature,
Who believe that in all ages
Every human heart is human,
That in even [foreign] bosoms
There are longings, yearnings, strivings
…
Listen to this simple story,
To this Song of Hiawatha!
Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles
Through the green lanes of the country,
…
Pause by some neglected graveyard,
For a while to muse, and ponder
On a half-effaced inscription,
Written with little skill of song-craft,
Homely phrases, but each letter
Full of hope and yet of heart-break,
Full of all the tender pathos
Of the Here and the Hereafter;–
Stay and read this rude inscription,
Read this Song of Hiawatha!
Wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.