27 Facts About Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a British composer and conductor.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was particularly known for his three cantatas on the epic 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor married an Englishwoman, Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born at 15 Theobalds Road in Holborn, London, to Alice Hare Martin, an Englishwoman, and Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, a Creole man from Sierra Leone who had studied medicine in London and later became an administrator in West Africa.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor changed from the violin to composition, working under Charles Villiers Stanford.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor later used the name "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor", with a hyphen, said to be following a printer's error.

In 1899 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor married Jessie Walmisley, whom he had met as a fellow student at the Royal College of Music.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's parents objected to the marriage because Taylor was of mixed-race parentage, but relented and attended the wedding.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was later helped by Edward Elgar, who recommended him to the Three Choirs Festival.

At one stage Samuel Coleridge-Taylor seriously considered emigrating to the United States, as he was intrigued by his father's family's past there.

In 1904, on his first tour to the United States, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, a rare event in those days for a man of African descent.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's music was widely performed and he had great support among African Americans.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor sought to draw from traditional African music and integrate it into the classical tradition, which he considered Johannes Brahms to have done with Hungarian music and Antonin Dvorak with Bohemian music.

Dunbar and other black people encouraged Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to draw from his Sierra Leonean ancestry and the music of the African continent.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's standing caused Coleridge-Taylor to be invited to judge at music festivals.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was said to be personally shy but was still effective as a conductor.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor learned to retain his rights and earned royalties for other compositions after achieving wide renown but always struggled financially.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's death is often attributed to the stress of his financial situation.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery, Wallington, Surrey.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor composed chamber music, anthems, and the African Dances for violin, among other works.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor set one poem by his namesake Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan".

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor visited the United States three times in the early 1900s, receiving great acclaim, and earned the title "the African Mahler" from the white orchestral musicians in New York in 1910.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor composed a violin concerto in 1912 for the American violinist Maud Powell.

In 1999, freelance music editor Patrick Meadows identified three important chamber works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor that had never been printed or made widely available to musicians.

Meadows has transcribed from the RCM manuscript the Haytian Dances, a work virtually identical to the Noveletten but with a fifth movement inserted by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, based on the Scherzo of the symphony.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor assembled a libretto and catalogued the opera in her thesis, presenting a first critical examination of the work by a thorough investigation of the discovered manuscripts.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor composed Thelma between 1907 and 1909; it is alternatively entitled The Amulet.