1875–1912 · United Kingdom · 20th century
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was a British composer, pianist and conductor. He studied at the Royal College of Music and later taught there himself, gained recognition beyond Britain and collaborated with the American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The site holds his songs for voice and piano at upper intermediate and advanced level.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born on 15 August 1875 in the Holborn district of London. His father, the physician Daniel Peter Taylor, came from British West Africa, now Sierra Leone, and his mother was Alice Martin. His father left before his son was born and went back to Africa. Samuel spent his childhood in another part of London, Croydon. He was named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the hyphen in the surname Coleridge-Taylor appeared later.
Samuel's musical talent showed itself early: at a music school he learned to play the violin and the piano, and at the age of eight he first appeared in public as a violinist. In 1890 he entered the Royal College of Music, and a year later his hymn "In Thee, O Lord" was published. From 1892 the Irish composer Charles Villiers Stanford taught him composition, and in 1893 Taylor received a scholarship from the college. That same year, 1893, a concert of his works was given in Croydon, featuring a piano quintet, parts of a clarinet sonata and several songs.
By 1896 Coleridge-Taylor was already gaining a name as a composer. Edward Elgar helped him by including him among the participants of the Three Choirs Festival, where Coleridge-Taylor's "Ballade in A minor" was performed. His early work was also supported by August Jaeger, an editor at the publisher Novello, who wrote to Elgar about the young composer's talent.
In 1898 the cantata "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" was first performed under the direction of Charles Villiers Stanford, and in the following decades its popularity among England's choral societies was matched only by Handel's "Messiah" and Mendelssohn's "Elijah". The composer went on to write two further cantatas on the Hiawatha story: "The Death of Minnehaha", followed by "Hiawatha's Departure". All three, together with an overture, were published under the collective title "The Song of Hiawatha".
His growing reputation led to Coleridge-Taylor being invited to judge at music festivals. Contemporaries also noted that he was an effective conductor.
In 1899 Coleridge-Taylor married Jessie Walmisley, a fellow student of his from the Royal College of Music; her parents at first objected to the marriage because of Taylor's origin, but later accepted it and attended the wedding. The couple had a son, Hiawatha (1900-1980), and a daughter, Avril (1903-1998), both of whom later became musicians.
In time Coleridge-Taylor gained international recognition, while at the same time drawing attention to his mixed heritage. He collaborated with the American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and became one of the leading figures among African Americans in the United States. In 1901 a 200-voice chorus was founded in Washington in his honour — the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society. Coleridge-Taylor made three concert tours in the United States, in 1904, 1906 and 1910, and during the first of these visits he was received by President Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1904 Coleridge-Taylor became conductor of the Handel Society and at the same time did a great deal of teaching: he worked as an associate at the Croydon Conservatoire and as a professor of composition at Trinity College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Composers' earnings at the time were modest: Coleridge-Taylor sold the rights to "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" outright for just 15 guineas, even though hundreds of thousands of copies of the score were later sold. After that he began keeping the rights to his new works and earning royalties from them, but financial difficulties stayed with him for most of his career.
Coleridge-Taylor died at 37 of pneumonia. King George V granted his widow, Jessie, an annual pension of £100. A memorial concert held at the Royal Albert Hall in 1912 raised more than £1,400 for the composer's family. The fact that he himself had received no income from the rights to "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" later became one of the reasons for the founding of the Performing Right Society.
Later, between 1928 and 1939, the conductor Malcolm Sargent staged "The Song of Hiawatha" in costume for ten seasons, with the Royal Albert Hall performances involving the Royal Choral Society and a company of ballet dancers.
Coleridge-Taylor wrote choral and chamber works, as well as anthems. English choral societies performed his large-scale choral works for decades after his death. Among his music are also songs for voice and piano — these are what the dana-piano.kz site presents: the section holds eight editions, and all of them are written for this ensemble.
Five editions are rated upper intermediate — the songs "Oh what comes over the Sea", "When I am dead, my dearest", "Oh, Roses for the flush of youth", "She sat and sang alway" and "Viking Song". Three more songs are rated advanced — "Unmindful of the Roses", "Oh, the Summer" and "Too late for love".
A good place to start with his songs is the upper intermediate editions "Oh what comes over the Sea", "When I am dead, my dearest", "Oh, Roses for the flush of youth" and "She sat and sang alway", moving on to the advanced "Unmindful of the Roses".