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SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR
Petite Suite de concert, Op. 77 (1910)

The English composer, conductor, and educator Samuel Coleridge-Taylor came to public attention as a teenager with the release of his first published compositions and then a symphony at age 20. He was born in London to a father from Sierra Leone, West Africa, who had come to England for medical training. His British mother brought him up near London after his father returned to Africa. He trained at the Royal College of Music, studying composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, and his music was championed by Edward Elgar, the country’s leading composer. Coleridge-Taylor went on to serve as conductor of the Handel Society of London and was professor of composition at the Guildhall School of Music and London’s Trinity College of Music.

Coleridge-Taylor visited the United States three times, beginning in 1904. His music had already inspired African-American singers in Washington, DC, to establish the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society, which he conducted. President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the White House. Coleridge-Taylor became fascinated with African-American writers such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Booker T. Washington, who wrote the introduction to his collection 24 Negro Melodies. Many of his compositions touch on themes relating to race, such as African Romances (1897), Dream Lovers (1898), African Suite for the Pianoforte (1898), and Toussaint l’Ouverture (1901), inspired by the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late 18th century. He was best known in his time for a Hiawatha trilogy based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (a poem that inspired Antonín Dvořák in the 1890s as well).

Tonight we hear one of Coleridge-Taylor’s most popular compositions, the four-movement Petite Suite de concert, Op. 77, written in 1910. Le Caprice de Nannette (Nannette’s Caprice) has a boisterous opening for the full orchestra that leads to a charming waltz reminiscent of Tchaikovsky’s ballets. The elegant second movement, Demande et réponse (Question and Answer), begins with strings alone, the violins softly playing a slow lyrical melody that is taken up by the full orchestra. A middle section featuring woodwinds is more jaunty before a return of the opening theme. Un Sonnet d’amour (A Love Sonnet) returns to a playful mood before the Suite comes to a lively conclusion with La Tarantelle frétillante (Frisky Tarantella).

                                                                        —Christopher H. Gibbs

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR
Petite Suite de concert, Op. 77 (1910)

The English composer, conductor, and educator Samuel Coleridge-Taylor came to public attention as a teenager with the release of his first published compositions and then a symphony at age 20. He was born in London to a father from Sierra Leone, West Africa, who had come to England for medical training. His British mother brought him up near London after his father returned to Africa. He trained at the Royal College of Music, studying composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, and his music was championed by Edward Elgar, the country’s leading composer. Coleridge-Taylor went on to serve as conductor of the Handel Society of London and was professor of composition at the Guildhall School of Music and London’s Trinity College of Music.

Coleridge-Taylor visited the United States three times, beginning in 1904. His music had already inspired African-American singers in Washington, DC, to establish the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society, which he conducted. President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the White House. Coleridge-Taylor became fascinated with African-American writers such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Booker T. Washington, who wrote the introduction to his collection 24 Negro Melodies. Many of his compositions touch on themes relating to race, such as African Romances (1897), Dream Lovers (1898), African Suite for the Pianoforte (1898), and Toussaint l’Ouverture (1901), inspired by the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late 18th century. He was best known in his time for a Hiawatha trilogy based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha (a poem that inspired Antonín Dvořák in the 1890s as well).

Tonight we hear one of Coleridge-Taylor’s most popular compositions, the four-movement Petite Suite de concert, Op. 77, written in 1910. Le Caprice de Nannette (Nannette’s Caprice) has a boisterous opening for the full orchestra that leads to a charming waltz reminiscent of Tchaikovsky’s ballets. The elegant second movement, Demande et réponse (Question and Answer), begins with strings alone, the violins softly playing a slow lyrical melody that is taken up by the full orchestra. A middle section featuring woodwinds is more jaunty before a return of the opening theme. Un Sonnet d’amour (A Love Sonnet) returns to a playful mood before the Suite comes to a lively conclusion with La Tarantelle frétillante (Frisky Tarantella).

                                                                        —Christopher H. Gibbs