Basic Facts
Born: August 15, 1875, Holborn, London
Died: September 1, 1912, Croydon, England
Type of Performer: Composer
Genre: Classical
About Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Born in London in 1875, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor began playing violin at age 5. He was admitted to the Royal College of Music in 1890. By 1896, he was conducting an amateur orchestra in London as well as teaching, composing, and judging music festivals. In 1898, at the suggestion of Edward Elgar, he was commissioned to compose a piece for a festival, and the resulting Ballade in A Minor was a great success. Soon after, he composed The Song of Hiawatha, his cantata trilogy for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. The trilogy was based on the poem about Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
He was proud of his African heritage and incorporated traditional African music into his compositions, making him a very progressive composer for his time. In 1899, he became interested in African American folk music after he heard a concert performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. He began working the music into his compositions, to the appreciation of Black Americans. The Coleridge-Society, a group formed by a group of African-American fans, invited him to toured the United States in 1904, 1906, and 1910. During his first tour, he conducted the Marine Band and the Coleridge-Society Chorus, and he met with President Teddy Roosevelt. In England, he continued to compose and conduct and he taught at Trinity College of Music. He died in 1912 of pneumonia due to overwork.
Listen
Hiawatha Overture
Deep River (traditional, arr. Coleridge-Taylor and Kanneh-Mason)
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