SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR, COMPOSER
A Sketch
By Booker T. Washington
From The Musician
It is given to but few men in so short a time to create for themselves a position of such prominence on two continents as has fallen to the lot of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Born in London, August 15, 1875, Mr. Coleridge-Taylor is not yet thirty. His father, an African and a native of Sierra Leone, was educated at King’s college, London, and his medical practice was divided between London and Sierra Leone.
As a child of four Coleridge-Taylor could read music before he could read a book. His first musical instruction was on the violin. The piano he would not touch, and did not for some years. As one of the singing boys in St. George’s church, Croydon, he received an early training in choral work. At fifteen he entered the Royal College of Music as a student of the violin. Afterwards winning a scholarship in composition he entered, in 1893, the classes of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, with whom he studied four years or more.
Mr. Coleridge-Taylor early gave evidence of creative powers of a higher order, and today he ranks as one of the most interesting and remarkable of British composers and conductors. Aside from his creative work, he is actively engaged as a teacher in Trinity college, London, and as conductor of the Handel society, London, and the Rochester Choral society. At the Gloucester festival of 1898 he attracted general notice by the performance of his Ballade in A minor, for orchestra, Op. 33, which he had been invited to conduct. His remarkable sympathetic setting in cantata form of portions of Longfellow’s Hiawatha, Op. 30, has done much to make him known in England and America. This triple choral work, with its haunting, melodic phrases, bold harmonic scheme, and vivid orchestration, was produced one part or scene at a time. The work was not planned as a whole, for the composer’s original intention was to set Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast only. This section was first performed at a concert of the Royal College of Music under the conductorship of Stanford, November 11, 1898. In response to an invitation from the committee of the North Staffordshire Musical Festival The Death of Minnehaha, Op. 30, No. 2, was written, and given under the composer’s direction at Hanley, October 26, 1899. The overture to The Song of Hiawatha, for full orchestra, Op. 30, No. 3, a distinct work, was composed for and performed at the Norwich musical festival of 1899. The entire work, with the added third part—Hiawatha’s Departure, Op. 30, No. 4—was first given by the Royal Choral society in Royal Albert hall, London, March 22, 1900, the composer conducting.
The first performance of the entire work in America was given under the direction of Mr. Charles E. Knauss by the Orpheus Oratorio society in Easton, Penn., May 5, 1903. The Cecilia society of Boston, under Mr. B. J. Lang, gave the first performance of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast on March 14, 1900; of Hiawatha’s Departure on December 5, 1900; and on December 2, 1902, The Death of Minnehaha, together with Hiawatha’s Departure.
In 1902 Mr. Coleridge-Taylor was invited to conduct at the Sheffield musical festival his orchestral and choral rhapsody Meg Blane, Op. 48. The fact that this work was given on the same program with a Bach cantata, Dvorak’s Stabat Mater and Tschaikowsky’s Symphonie Pathetique indicates the high esteem in which the composer is held.
A sacred cantata of the dimensions and style of a modern oratorio. The Atonement, Op. 53, was first given at the Hereford festival, September 9, 1903, under the composer’s baton, and its success was even greater at the first London performance in the Royal Albert hall on Ash Wednesday, 1904, the composer conducting. The first performance of The Atonement in this country was by the Church Choral society under Richard Henry Warren at St. Thomas’s church, New York, February 24 and 25, 1904. Worthy of special mention are the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, Op. 6 (1897), which Joachim has given, and the Sorrow Songs, Op. 57 (1904), a setting of six of Christina Rossetti’s exquisite poems.
Beside the work already mentioned are a Nonet for Piano, Strings and Wind, Op. 3 (1894), Symphony in A minor, Op. 7 (1895), Solemn Prelude for Orchestra, Op. 40, (1899), between thirty and forty songs, various piano solos, anthems, and part songs, and part works in both large and small form for the violin with orchestra or piano.
Mr. Coleridge-Taylor has written much, has achieved much. His work, moreover, possesses not only charm and power, but distinction, the individual note. The genuineness, depth and intensity of his feeling, coupled with his mastery of technique, spontaneity, and ability to think in his own way, explain the force of the appeal his compositions make. Another element in the persuasiveness of his music lies in its naturalness, the directness of its appeal, the use of simple and expressive melodic themes, a happy freedom from the artificial. These traits, employed in the freedom of modern musical speech, coupled with emotional power and supported by ample technical resource, beget an utterance quick to evoke response.
The paternity of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor and his love for what is elemental and racial found rich expression in the choral work by which he is best known and more obviously in his African Romances, Op. 17, a set of seven songs; the African Suite for the piano, Op. 35; and Five Choral Ballads, for baritone, solo, quartet, chorus and orchestra, Op. 54, being a setting of five of Longfellow’s Poems on Slavery. The transcription of Negro melodies recently published is, however, the most complete expression of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor’s native bent and power. Using some of the native songs of Africa and the West Indies with songs that came into being in America during the slavery regime, he has, in handling these melodies, preserved their distinctive traits and individuality, at the same time giving them an art from fully imbued with their essential spirit.
It is especially gratifying that at this time, when interest in the plantation songs seems to be dying out with the generation that gave them birth, when the Negro song is in too many minds associated with “rag” music and the more reprehensible “coon” song, that the most cultivated musician of his race, a man of the highest esthetic ideals, should seek to give permanence to the folk songs of his people by giving them a new interpretation and an added dignity.
Outwitting the Devil
A STORY
BY KELT-NOR
What you want to press upon your brethren of African descent is (1) hard work, (2) the earnest use in that work of all the brains with which the Almighty has blessed them, (3) the acquirement of knowledge whereby that work may become better paid, and (4) chiefest of all the highest possible standard of morality, higher therefore than has been reached by any people in the old or new world, in this first decade of the 20th century.
Now the most bigoted citizen north or south, of European or Asiatic extraction, has always been only too glad to concede to your people the first mentioned of these blessings; but, in the southern part of our country at least, he is very apt to do all in his power to prevent his fellow citizens, with African blood in their veins, from acquiring the last three.
As I sat pondering on this melancholy fact and on how best to enforce the precepts of which I have spoken, my eyes fell on the theme which my little girl had just written for humble submission to her school ma’am. It seemed to me to the point, and I straightway copied it out for you, just as written. Here it is:
The Students’ Adventure.
Two German students, Dietrich and Hans, wished to get for their Botany Professor a specimen of a particular kind of rare pine which grew only on the Hartz mountains. They were natives of a district near there; so, when they went home for their Christmas vacation, they went on a snowshoeing trip, to get some.
They gave, on their way, in return for food and lodging, such songs and stories as they knew; and so they traveled on pleasantly enough until, on the third day, they found themselves near the lonely tract on which grew the pines. As there were no more farmhouses at which they could stop, they hurried forward, hoping to get to the trees and back before nightfall.
The snow was deep, but as they were young and strong, and more than that had on snow shoes, they had no difficulty. But alas! about half a mile from the pines, the strap of one of Hans’ snowshoes broke. He took his snowshoes off and carried them, but found doing so hard work, and when they reached the pines the sun had almost set, and Hans was tired. “You rest old boy,” said Dietrich (in German of course) “and I’ll get the boughs.”
It was easier said than done, for when he got to the trees he had to take off his snowshoes and shin up. The huge trunk was hard to grapple, but he managed it, and after about 20 minutes had two fine specimens. But when Dietrich was safe on the ground again the sun had set, there were only a few golden clouds floating on the horizon, and the light was waning fast.
“Oh, beloved Heaven! We must hasten wind-fast” (literal translation), exclaimed he, and, when he reached Hans, “Get up, old fellow!”
Hans got up, and they started home by moonlight.
Now there happened to be a devil on that mountain—the devil of ignorance—and, of all that he hated, professor and students he abhorred most; for did not they forward learning more than any one? Hearing these students talking he gathered—being a German devil, and so understanding them—that they were students, and that they were going to forward his enemy, Learning, by giving some pine-boughs off his mountain to a hated professor.
“This must not be!” he stormed; so he took hold of the heels of Dietrich’s snow shoes, and putting his tail round Hans’ waist, for every step they took he pulled them back three; so they went backwards towards his cave.
Now Hans wore spectacles, and he saw what the devil was doing, reflected in them. He told Dietrich, in Latin, what went on, and the devil, being very ignorant did not understand. So they figured out by geometry that if they turned round and walked the other way they would get shelter even sooner than before.
They carried out this plan so scientifically that the devil, being also very unperceptive, did not find out how they were fooling him, until he saw the farmhouse lights. Then, being very much frightened he let go of the students and fled shrieking and howling up the mountain. That was the last they ever saw of him—which they did not regret.
When the students went back to the university, they triumphantly gave the pine-boughs to the professor.
Goodness knows how the young person who wrote that story got it into her head that one is justified in tricking even the good old-fashioned Nick with his horns and hoofs, for any purpose whatever. Myself I disclaim any responsibility for the morality involved. But this I will say that if trickery and “lying low” of any kind is ever justified, or (I may rather say) not much noticed by the recording angel, it must be when they are brought to bear on the very Evil Spirit which grudges to any race the attainment of more knowledge and a higher civilization than that to which their ancestors, near or remote had arrived.
KELT-NOR.