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The composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor continually bore the weight of her family reputation. As the daughter of the celebrated composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a leading the prominent English artists of the early 20th century, her reputation was enveloped in the deep shadows of history.

A World Premiere

Not long ago, I reflected on these legacies as I got ready to record the first-ever recording of her concerto for piano composed in 1936. Featuring intense musical themes, expressive melodies, and bold rhythms, this piece will offer audiences deep understanding into how she – a wartime composer born in 1903 – imagined her existence as a female composer of color.

Past and Present

But here’s the thing about shadows. It can take a while to adjust, to see shapes as they truly exist, to separate fact from distortion, and I was reluctant to face Avril’s past for a while.

I deeply hoped her to be her father’s daughter. In some ways, this was true. The pastoral English palettes of Samuel’s influence can be detected in several pieces, such as From the Hills (1934) and Sussex Landscape (1940). But you only have to review the headings of her family’s music to realize how he identified as both a standard-bearer of British Romantic style as well as a voice of the African heritage.

This was where Samuel and Avril began to differ.

American society assessed the composer by the mastery of his music rather than the his ethnicity.

Samuel’s African Roots

While he was studying at the prestigious music college, the composer – the offspring of a Sierra Leonean father and a Caucasian parent – started to lean into his background. When the Black American writer the renowned Dunbar arrived in England in the late 19th century, the aspiring artist was keen to meet him. He set this literary work as a composition and the subsequent year incorporated his poetry for a musical work, Dream Lovers. Subsequently arrived the choral piece that made him famous: Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.

Based on the poet Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Samuel’s Hiawatha was an global success, particularly among the Black community who felt shared pride as American society assessed his work by the quality of his compositions instead of the his background.

Activism and Politics

Recognition did not temper his beliefs. During that period, he attended the pioneering African conference in the UK where he met the prominent scholar WEB Du Bois and observed a range of talks, covering the subjugation of Black South Africans. He remained an advocate throughout his life. He sustained relationships with early civil rights leaders such as this intellectual and the educator Washington, delivered his own speeches on ending discrimination, and even talked about issues of racism with President Theodore Roosevelt during an invitation to the US capital in 1904. As for his music, Du Bois recalled, “he established his reputation so prominently as a creative artist that it cannot soon be forgotten.” He succumbed in 1912, in his thirties. Yet how might her father have made of his child’s choice to travel to the African nation in the mid-20th century?

Issues and Stance

“Child of Celebrated Artist gives OK to apartheid system,” ran a headline in the Black American publication Jet magazine. Apartheid “appeared to me the correct approach”, she informed Jet. Upon further questioning, she revised her statement: she did not support with apartheid “fundamentally” and it “could be left to work itself out, overseen by benevolent residents of all races”. If Avril had been more attuned to her parent’s beliefs, or from segregated America, she could have hesitated about this system. But life had sheltered her.

Heritage and Innocence

“I have a English document,” she said, “and the officials never asked me about my race.” Therefore, with her “porcelain-white” skin (according to the magazine), she floated alongside white society, supported by their admiration for her deceased parent. She delivered a lecture about her family’s work at the Cape Town university and led the South African Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra in the city, programming the heroic third movement of her composition, subtitled: “In remembrance of my Father.” Although a confident pianist on her own, she never played as the lead performer in her piece. On the contrary, she always led as the conductor; and so the orchestra of the era played under her baton.

Avril hoped, in her own words, she “might bring a change”. But by 1954, things fell apart. Once officials became aware of her African heritage, she had to depart the country. Her British passport offered no defense, the UK representative recommended her departure or be jailed. She went back to the UK, embarrassed as the extent of her innocence was realized. “This experience was a painful one,” she stated. Increasing her embarrassment was the printing that year of her unfortunate magazine feature, a year after her unceremonious exit from South Africa.

A Recurring Theme

Upon contemplating with these legacies, I perceived a recurring theme. The account of holding UK citizenship until it’s revoked – one that calls to mind troops of color who fought on behalf of the British in the global conflict and survived only to be not given their earned rewards. Along with the Windrush era,