Four Centuries of Great Music August 17, 2025 Sesquicentennial of the Birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music I am celebrating the sesquicentennial of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor which was two days ago on August 15th.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born on August 15, 1875 in London England of mixed racial parents.  His mother Alice Martin was English and his father Daniel Taylor, was a  Creole from Sierra Leone.  He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music and achieved such success that he was referred to by white musicians in New York City as the "African Mahler" when he had three tours of the United States in the early 1900s.  He married an Englishwoman, Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers. Their son, Hiawatha, adapted his father's music for a variety of performances. Their daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor, became a composer-conductor.   He developed a strong interest in his African heritage and wrote works which incorporated elements of African music.  Coleridge-Taylor participated as the youngest delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference held in London, and met leading Americans through this connection, including the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and the scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois.  He wrote several songs based upon the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar.  His most famous work was Hiawatha's Wedding Feast based upon Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song
of Hiawatha. The poplar Hiawatha's Wedding Feast sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but Coleridge-Taylor had sold the music outright for the sum of 15 guineas, so did not benefit directly from its success.  He learned to retain his rights and earned royalties for other compositions after achieving wide renown but always struggled financially.  Coleridge-Taylor was 37 when he died of pneumonia on September 1, 1912. His death is often attributed to the stress of his financial situation.



Today there are many albums of the music Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  Violinist Rachel Barton Pine was one of the earliest artists to feature his music with her release of her album “Violin Concertos of Black Composers” back in 2000. This was my first exposure to the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  In her 2018 album “Blues Dialogues: Music by Black Composers” she included his “Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin” which is in three movements: I. Plain Blues, Just Blues and Jettin’ Blues. 


Samuel Coleridge-Taylor:  Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin I. Plain Blue/s 
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor:  Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin  II. Just Blue/s 
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor:  Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin  III. Jettin’ Blue/s 
Rachel Barton Pine
Blues Dialogues: Music by Black Composers
Cedille Records

You have been listening to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor:  Blue/s Forms for Solo Violin performed by Rachel Barton Pine from her album “Blues Dialogues: Music by Black Composers”


Next on this celebration of the sesquicentennial of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is his Symphony in A Minor, Op. 8. This student work, written while he was at the Royal Academy of Music in 1896, is in 4 movements  I. Allegro appassionato; II. Lament. Larghetto affettuoso; III. Scherzo. Allegro ma non troppo  and IV. Allegro maestoso ed energico 


Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is Symphony in A Minor, Op. 8   I. Allegro appassionato
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is Symphony in A Minor, Op. 8   II. Lament. Larghetto affettuoso
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is Symphony in A Minor, Op. 8   III. Scherzo. Allegro ma non troppo
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is Symphony in A Minor, Op. 8   IV. Allegro maestoso ed energico
Douglas Bostock, conducting the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Symphony in A Minor and Hiawatha's Wedding Feast
Alto Records

Lets close this first hour of this celebration of the sesquicentennial of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with this first five of his Seven African Romances, Op.17. This work was  written in 1897 setting poems of African-American poet and novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar to music after first meeting Dunbar in London in 1896.

These songs are: An African love song, A prayer, A starry night, Dawn and Ballad

Here sung by Elizabeth Llewellyn, soprano with Simon Lepper, piano from the album “Heart & Hereafter: Collected songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor  Orchid Classics

Lets open this second hour of this celebration of the sesquicentennial of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with the last two of his Seven African Romances, Op.17:   Over the hills and How shall I woo thee

Again these are sung by Elizabeth Llewellyn, soprano with Simon Lepper, piano from the album “Heart & Hereafter: Collected songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Next on this celebration of the sesquicentennial of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is the work that made him famous “Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, Op. 30 No. 1”.  The cantata is based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. Longfellow sourced the stories from legends and ethnographic studies relating to the Ojibwe and other Native American peoples, although the poem is much closer in style to the American Romantic literary tradition. Native American history and folklore had become particularly fashionable by the 1890s, and Coleridge-Taylor’s cantata capitalised on this popular interest in ‘exotic’ subjects. Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast was soon being performed around the world. The work proved ideal for amateur choral societies, and within six years the cantata had received in England alone over 200 performances. 

From the 1920s, it was staged regularly in a ballet version at the Royal Albert Hall. The first of these performances took place in 1924, conducted by Hiawatha Coleridge-Taylor, the composer’s son. In 1928, the baton passed to Sir Malcolm Sargent, who presented it in two-week runs every year until the Second World War.  Sargent became so closely associated with Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast through his Albert Hall performances that one of his biographers named the chapter on the pre-war period ‘The Wigwam Years’.

The work is in nine movements with  orchestra and chorus with the sixth movement featuring a tenor solo. 
I. You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis 
II. Then the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis 
III. He was dress'd in shirt of doe-skin 
IV. First he danc'd a solemn measure
V. Then said they to Chibiabos
VI. Onaway! Awake, beloved 
VII. Thus the gentle Chibiabos 
VIII. Very boastful was Iagoo 
IX. Such was Hiawatha's wedding 

Here is a performance of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, Op. 30 No. 1” by Royal Choral Society  and Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, with Richard Lewis, tenor from the album Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Symphony in A Minor and Hiawatha's Wedding Feast
Alto Records

I am going to close this episode of Four Centuries of Great Music celebrating the sesquicentennial of the birth of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor which was two days ago on August 15th with his Toussaint L’Ouverture written in 1901.  Samuel Coleridge-Taylor wrote this overture based on his fascination with Toussaint L’Ouverture, a military hero from a century prior, who led former slaves to independence in Haiti.

Here is a performance of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Toussaint L’Ouverture by the National Philharmonic conducted by Michael Repper from the album Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Toussaint L’Ouverture • Ballade Op. 4 • Suites from “24 Negro Melodies” Avie Records