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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor always experienced the burden of her parent’s heritage. Being the child of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, among the best-known UK composers of the turn of the 20th century, Avril’s reputation was enveloped in the long shadows of bygone eras.

The First Recording

Not long ago, I sat with these legacies as I got ready to produce the world premiere recording of the composer’s concerto for piano composed in 1936. Boasting emotional harmonies, expressive melodies, and valiant rhythms, this piece will provide audiences fascinating insight into how the composer – an artist in conflict who entered the world in 1903 – conceived of her world as a woman of colour.

Shadows and Truth

However about shadows. It can take a while to adjust, to recognize outlines as they actually appear, to separate fact from distortion, and I had been afraid to address Avril’s past for a period.

I earnestly desired her to be her father’s daughter. Partially, she was. The idyllic English tones of parental inspiration can be detected in many of her works, for example From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to examine the titles of her family’s music to realize how he identified as not only a flag bearer of English Romanticism but a voice of the African heritage.

This was where Samuel and Avril appeared to part ways.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his compositions rather than the colour of his skin.

Parental Heritage

During his studies at the Royal College of Music, Samuel – the offspring of a parent from Sierra Leone and a white English mother – began embracing his background. At the time the Black American writer this literary figure arrived in England in the late 19th century, the 21-year-old composer eagerly sought him out. He set the poet’s African Romances as a composition and the next year used the poet’s words for a musical work, Dream Lovers. This was followed by the choral work that put Samuel on the map: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on this American writer’s The Song of Hiawatha, the piece was an international hit, notably for African Americans who felt shared pride as the majority judged Samuel by the brilliance of his art as opposed to the his race.

Advocacy and Beliefs

Success did not temper his beliefs. At the turn of the century, he participated in the initial Pan African gathering in London where he made the acquaintance of the African American intellectual this influential figure and observed a range of talks, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He was a campaigner to his final days. He maintained ties with pioneers of civil rights such as this intellectual and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even engaged in dialogue on issues of racism with the US President on a trip to the US capital in the early 1900s. In terms of his art, Du Bois recalled, “he wrote his name so notably as a musician that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in that year, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have reacted to his child’s choice to be in this country in the that decade?

Issues and Stance

“Daughter of Famous Composer shows support to apartheid system,” declared a title in the African American magazine Jet magazine. This policy “struck me as the appropriate course”, the composer stated Jet. Upon further questioning, she qualified her remarks: she did not support with this policy “as a concept” and it “ought to be permitted to resolve itself, directed by benevolent South Africans of diverse ethnicities”. If Avril had been more aligned to her father’s politics, or from the US under segregation, she might have thought twice about this system. Yet her life had sheltered her.

Identity and Naivety

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the authorities failed to question me about my ethnicity.” Thus, with her “fair” skin (as Jet put it), she floated among the Europeans, supported by their admiration for her renowned family member. She presented about her father’s music at the Cape Town university and led the national orchestra in Johannesburg, including the heroic third movement of her Piano Concerto, named: “Dedicated to my Father.” While a skilled pianist personally, she never played as the soloist in her work. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the apartheid orchestra performed under her direction.

The composer aspired, according to her, she “could introduce a change”. Yet in the mid-1950s, the situation collapsed. Once officials became aware of her Black ancestry, she could no longer stay the country. Her British passport failed to safeguard her, the UK representative recommended her departure or risk imprisonment. She went back to the UK, feeling great shame as the scale of her inexperience dawned. “The lesson was a hard one,” she expressed. Adding to her humiliation was the release in 1955 of her controversial discussion, a year after her unceremonious exit from that nation.

A Familiar Story

While I reflected with these memories, I felt a familiar story. The narrative of identifying as British until it’s challenged – which recalls troops of color who served for the British in the global conflict and made it through but were refused rightful benefits. Including those from Windrush,