SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR
Born August 15, 1875, in Holborn, United Kingdom
Died September 1, 1912, in Croydon, United Kingdom
Four Novelletten, Op. 51, nos. 1 and 4
First performance by the Wichita Symphony.
Music history has many composers whose careers and reputations flourished in the past. Their music, once heard and enjoyed, fell out of favor and even forgotten. Sometimes, the music enjoys a revival and reconsideration. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is one such composer.
One hundred and twenty years ago, Coleridge-Taylor was well known and popular, particularly among audiences in England and North America. His epic Song of Hiawatha (1898 – 1900), a trilogy of works for soloists, large chorus, and orchestra, based on Longfellow's poem, was one of the most frequently performed works of the early-20th century on a comparable scale of popularity with Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah. Hiawatha was performed at the 1900 Birmingham Festival in England. It garnered a standing ovation and more applause than The Dream of Gerontius by Edward Elgar, a composer to whom our musical memories have been much kinder. Under the baton of Sir Malcolm Sargent, the Song of Hiawatha became an annual tradition at London's Royal Albert Hall between 1924 until 1939, when World War II brought the concerts to an end.
Coleridge-Taylor was of mixed race. His mother, Alice Hare Martin (1856 – 1953), was an Englishwoman. Alice named her son after the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and raised him in her parents' home in Croydon, Surrey. His father, Daniel Taylor, was a Creole from Sierra Leone studying medicine in London. The parents were not married, and Taylor returned to Sierra Leone around 1875. According to some sources, he was unaware that he was to be a father. Daniel was eventually appointed the Imperial Coroner in Gambia. He never met his son. Samuel later hyphenated his name Coleridge-Taylor after a typo appeared in a concert program.
Growing up in a family with musical tendencies, Samuel studied violin at an early age with his grandfather. He progressed rapidly, demonstrated talent, and was admitted to the Royal College of Music at 15. He switched to composition, studying under Charles Villiers Stanford, a leading English composer of the late-19th century. His fellow students included Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
By 1897, Coleridge-Taylor had met the Black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The two performed a recital together in Croydon and collaborated on a romantic opera in 1898. In 1900, Coleridge-Taylor served as the youngest delegate to the London Pan-American Conference. He met W.E.B. DuBois, who, along with Dunbar, encouraged Coleridge-Taylor to explore his roots as a Black man.
Coleridge-Taylor studied the music of the West Indies, Africa, and Negro Spirituals. He credited his interest in "the beautiful folk music of my race" to Frederick Loudin, whose international tours as leader of the Fisk Jubilee Singers introduced many to spirituals. Coleridge-Taylor sought to draw from this music as Dvořák drew from Bohemian music and Brahms from Hungarian influences. Coleridge-Taylor used spirituals when he published his Twenty-Four Negro Melodies in 1905 with a preface written by Booker T. Washington.
By 1896, Coleridge-Taylor gained attention as a composer from musicians like Edward Elgar and Sir Charles Grove. The first of the Hiawatha pieces, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, in 1898 launched his career. His fame spread quickly. Tours of the United States followed in 1904, 1906, and 1910. He was received at the White House by President Roosevelt in 1904.
Coleridge-Taylor was embraced by the African American community, who named a 200-voice choral society after him in Washington, DC (1901). The Coleridge-Taylor Society Chorus sponsored the three American tours. Two public schools (both segregated in those days) were later founded and named for him in Louisville (1913) and Baltimore (1926).
Coleridge-Taylor died on September 1, 1912, after a brief illness of pneumonia. His children, daughter Avril and son, Hiawatha, enjoyed careers as professional musicians during most of the 20th century.
Two of the Four Novelletten heard at these concerts date from 1903. Novelletten is a German term meaning "novelty pieces." It's speculated that Coleridge-Taylor may have known the Novelletten for Piano composed by Robert Schumann in 1838.
No listener familiar with the music of Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, and Grieg will find anything unusual about these pieces. Coleridge-Taylor used the Romantic style of the late-nineteenth-century common to the popular salon music composed for string orchestras. He frequently programmed these works when he conducted orchestras. They've appeared on programs more frequently as orchestras have been reduced to strings only (and masked) during the COVID-19 pandemic and take deliberate steps to recognize diversity in classical music.
The First Novellette is an elegant, waltz-like piece with interesting rhythmic effects. While the instrumentation focuses on the strings, Coleridge-Taylor adds a triangle and tambourine for color. The Fourth Novellette of the set is more dramatic in contrast to the first. Both works last about five minutes each.
Notes by Don Reinhold, CEO, Wichita Symphony, 2021
