“It is rather sad, but she was a heroine sure enough,” said the Planter.
The pale light of the crescent moon served only to render the landscape shadowy. All nature rested. An owl fluttered slowly by and a soft murmur from far below told that the restless sea alone moved. There was no other sound. The riders mounted and silently stole away.
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.