SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR, COMPOSERA SketchBy Booker T. WashingtonFrom The Musician
A Sketch
By Booker T. Washington
From The Musician
It is given to but few men in so short a time to create for themselves a position of such prominence on two continents as has fallen to the lot of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Born in London, August 15, 1875, Mr. Coleridge-Taylor is not yet thirty. His father, an African and a native of Sierra Leone, was educated at King’s college, London, and his medical practice was divided between London and Sierra Leone.
As a child of four Coleridge-Taylor could read music before he could read a book. His first musical instruction was on the violin. The piano he would not touch, and did not for some years. As one of the singing boys in St. George’s church, Croydon, he received an early training in choral work. At fifteen he entered the Royal College of Music as a student of the violin. Afterwards winning a scholarship in composition he entered, in 1893, the classes of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, with whom he studied four years or more.
Mr. Coleridge-Taylor early gave evidence of creative powers of a higher order, and today he ranks as one of the most interesting and remarkable of British composers and conductors. Aside from his creative work, he is actively engaged as a teacher in Trinity college, London, and as conductor of the Handel society, London, and the Rochester Choral society. At the Gloucester festival of 1898 he attracted general notice by the performance of hisBallade in A minor, for orchestra, Op. 33, which he had been invited to conduct. His remarkable sympathetic setting in cantata form of portions of Longfellow’sHiawatha, Op. 30, has done much to make him known in England and America. This triple choral work, with its haunting, melodic phrases, bold harmonic scheme, and vivid orchestration, was produced one part or scene at a time. The work was not planned as a whole, for the composer’s original intention was to setHiawatha’s Wedding Feastonly. This section was first performed at a concert of the Royal College of Music under the conductorship of Stanford, November 11, 1898. In response to an invitation from the committee of the North Staffordshire Musical FestivalThe Death of Minnehaha, Op. 30, No. 2, was written, and given under the composer’s direction at Hanley, October 26, 1899. The overture toThe Song of Hiawatha, for full orchestra, Op. 30, No. 3, a distinct work, was composed for and performed at the Norwich musical festival of 1899. The entire work, with the added third part—Hiawatha’s Departure, Op. 30, No. 4—was first given by the Royal Choral society in Royal Albert hall, London, March 22, 1900, the composer conducting.
The first performance of the entire work in America was given under the direction of Mr. Charles E. Knauss by the Orpheus Oratorio society in Easton, Penn., May 5, 1903. The Cecilia society of Boston, under Mr. B. J. Lang, gave the first performance ofHiawatha’s Wedding Feaston March 14, 1900; ofHiawatha’s Departureon December 5, 1900; and on December 2, 1902,The Death of Minnehaha, together withHiawatha’s Departure.
In 1902 Mr. Coleridge-Taylor was invitedto conduct at the Sheffield musical festival his orchestral and choral rhapsodyMeg Blane, Op. 48. The fact that this work was given on the same program with a Bach cantata, Dvorak’sStabat Materand Tschaikowsky’sSymphonie Pathetiqueindicates the high esteem in which the composer is held.
A sacred cantata of the dimensions and style of a modern oratorio.The Atonement, Op. 53, was first given at the Hereford festival, September 9, 1903, under the composer’s baton, and its success was even greater at the first London performance in the Royal Albert hall on Ash Wednesday, 1904, the composer conducting. The first performance ofThe Atonementin this country was by the Church Choral society under Richard Henry Warren at St. Thomas’s church, New York, February 24 and 25, 1904. Worthy of special mention are theQuintet for Clarinet and Strings, Op. 6 (1897), which Joachim has given, and theSorrow Songs, Op. 57 (1904), a setting of six of Christina Rossetti’s exquisite poems.
Beside the work already mentioned area Nonet for Piano, Strings and Wind, Op. 3 (1894),Symphony in A minor, Op. 7 (1895),Solemn Prelude for Orchestra, Op. 40, (1899), between thirty and forty songs, various piano solos, anthems, and part songs, and part works in both large and small form for the violin with orchestra or piano.
Mr. Coleridge-Taylor has written much, has achieved much. His work, moreover, possesses not only charm and power, but distinction, the individual note. The genuineness, depth and intensity of his feeling, coupled with his mastery of technique, spontaneity, and ability to think in his own way, explain the force of the appeal his compositions make. Another element in the persuasiveness of his music lies in its naturalness, the directness of its appeal, the use of simple and expressive melodic themes, a happy freedom from the artificial. These traits, employed in the freedom of modern musical speech, coupled with emotional power and supported by ample technical resource, beget an utterance quick to evoke response.
The paternity of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor and his love for what is elemental and racial found rich expression in the choral work by which he is best known and more obviously in hisAfrican Romances, Op. 17, a set of seven songs; theAfrican Suitefor the piano, Op. 35; andFive Choral Ballads, for baritone, solo, quartet, chorus and orchestra, Op. 54, being a setting of five of Longfellow’sPoems on Slavery. The transcription of Negro melodies recently published is, however, the most complete expression of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor’s native bent and power. Using some of the native songs of Africa and the West Indies with songs that came into being in America during the slaveryregime, he has, in handling these melodies, preserved their distinctive traits and individuality, at the same time giving them an art from fully imbued with their essential spirit.
It is especially gratifying that at this time, when interest in the plantation songs seems to be dying out with the generation that gave them birth, when the Negro song is in too many minds associated with “rag” music and the more reprehensible “coon” song, that the most cultivated musician of his race, a man of the highest esthetic ideals, should seek to give permanence to the folk songs of his people by giving them a new interpretation and an added dignity.