Archive item of the month – September 2020
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (London 15 August 1875 – London 1 September 1912)
Two early songs by the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a violin student at the Royal College of Music (RCM) from 1890, starting composition lessons with Charles Villiers Stanford in 1892 and receiving an open scholarship in the following year. His studies ended at the RCM in 1897 and his contemporaries had included other famous composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, John Ireland, Frank Bridge and William Hurlstone.
A blood-red ring hung around the moon, no.3 of Six songs, Op.37.
Copyist’s manuscript in black ink, dated 1910, of no.3 from a set of six songs set for low voice with piano accompaniment, with texts by Robert Browning, Isabella Crawford, Barry Dane, George Eliot, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Eric Mackay. No.3, text by “Barry Dane” pseudonym of John Edward Logan (d.1915), was first performed on 24 February 1898 at the Croydon Conservatoire, sung by Jessie Walmisley who was to marry the composer on 30 December in the following year. The work was published by Novello & Co. who had published Coleridge-Taylor’s very first publication, the anthem In thee, O Lord, in 1891 at the age of sixteen.
The Broken Oar, no.2 of Three Songs (1893)
Copyist’s manuscript in black ink, dated 1900, of no.2 from three songs set for medium or high voice with piano accompaniment, texts by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). The Broken Oar (no.2) and The Arrow and the song (no.3), were first performed in a programme presented by the composer and his fellow students at the Royal College of Music in October 1893. No.1, Solitude, and No.3, were assigned to the publisher Augener although seemingly only no.1 was published (in 1918).
Coleridge-Taylor’s first commission came from the Three Choirs Festival at the instigation of Edward Elgar. It was the Ballade in A minor for orchestra. Elgar had come to know Coleridge-Taylor’s music through his friend at Novello’s, August Johannes Jaeger (1860-1909). Shortly after the performance of the Ballade, Stanford conducted the first performance, on 11 November 1898, of Coleridge-Taylor‘s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast at the RCM. Jaeger referred to this work as “the biggest success Novello’s had since [Mendelssohn’s] Elijah”. Coleridge-Taylor had a photograph of Stanford, framed in a horseshoe, hanging from one of the candle sconces of his piano at home.
These manuscripts were presented to the RSM by Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903-1998), daughter of the composer, who was a composer and conductor. She had composition lessons from Gordon Jacob and Alec Rowley and made her conducting début in 1933 at the Royal Albert Hall, later being guest conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
- Coleridge-Taylor [née Walmisley], Jessie, A Memory Sketch or Personal Reminiscences of my Husband, Genius and Musician (John Crowther: John Crowther, 1913?).
- De Lerma, Dominique-René, Black Composers in Europe: a works list, in Black Music Research Journal, vol.10 no.2 (Autumn, 1990), p.298.
