Petite suite de concert, Op.77
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)

THE STORY

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a precocious violinist when he was accepted into the Royal College of Music in 1890 at age 15. Once enrolled, he switched from violin to composition, coming under the tutelage of Charles Villiers Stanford—whose other well-known students were Vaughan Williams and Holst.

Dvořák was very popular in England at this time; his explorations of African-American and American music motivated the younger composer to do the same. Coleridge-Taylor appreciated the increasing variety of influences on orchestral music—in addition to being inspired by African-American songs, he wrote a trilogy of cantatas based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. The first of the trio, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, was for many years as popular in Britain as Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah and made Coleridge-Taylor world-famous.

The Petite suite de concert numbers among the popular light works within Coleridge-Taylor’s oeuvre. Although little is known about its genesis, it was likely a commission received around 1910. Some of the music comes from a student work based on Hans Christian Anderson’s The Clown and Columbine and includes four vignettes of contrasting character, all composed in the Romantic vein. The tune of the second movement, Demande et réponse, became such a big hit after the composer’s death that, according to one author, “many a front-parlor piano resounded to it.”

LISTEN FOR

• The bold Le caprice de Nannette contrasted by the delicate Demande et réponse
• A sweet lyricism of flute solos gently caressed by pizzicato strings in Un sonnet d’amour
• The wriggling Tarantella dance, traditionally a flirtatious couples’ dance of quick steps offset by tambourines

INSTRUMENTATION

Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion, strings