Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903-1998)
"Never be discouraged by criticism even if it means waiting years to gain real recognition. If you lay down your pen just because some critics have written scathing remarks about what you considered was your "masterpiece", you are admitting to yourself and everyone else that you are a failure..." - Avril Coleridge-Taylor
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Avril Coleridge-Taylor was a composer, conductor, pianist and singer of remarkable versatility. She wrote over a hundred works, ranging from orchestral pieces to songs, and had a conducting career in both Britain and, for a time, South Africa. In her own lifetime, Avril long remained in the shadow of her father, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. She started out her musical career performing her father’s songs alongside her own compositions, mostly songs and piano pieces. ‘The budding musician clearly has a gift for melody’, wrote The Era, while The Musical Standard judged that ‘she has inherited something of her father’s great gifts’. Having the Coleridge-Taylor name opened many doors for her as an emerging musician, but it also meant that she was constantly compared to Samuel. ‘It is hard for me to have my compositions compared with those of father’s,’ she admitted in an interview she gave when she was just sixteen. ‘People seem to forget that… I still have time to learn, and I have had no composition lessons yet.’ Our album of her orchestral works allows her artistry to take centre stage. She had a distinctive musical voice – eloquent, assured, and deeply personal. Together, her orchestral works stand as a powerful testament to her creativity and resilience, illuminating the experiences of a woman of colour in twentieth-century Britain. |
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Discover Avril Coleridge-Taylor
"When Avril Coleridge-Taylor came to write her memoir, she looked back on a life that had been full of both successes and setbacks. Daughter of the esteemed composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, she had once dreamed of following in her father’s footsteps to become one of Britain’s most celebrated musicians. At first it seemed as though this would be her destiny..."
Read the liner notes for Avril Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Concerto and Orchestral Works here.
"She christened her new persona with an orchestral tone poem, To April (1930), that progressed towards a more grand, dramatic style that was distinctively her own. That mature style synthesised the light music of her youth with influences from film music, African American spirituals as her father had interpreted them and a fascination with pastoralism that preoccupied so many British composers of the period."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's life and music in BBC Music Magazine here.
"It’s a tangled, unmistakably British history of belonging, exclusion, compromise and resilience — a history that is conveniently smoothed out when stories like Avril’s aren’t told. But Avril’s afterlife is only just beginning to take shape."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's legacy in Prospect Magazine here.
"As the daughter of the mixed race Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the white British singer Jessie Walmisley, Coleridge-Taylor had been naive to think that she might leave South Africa’s embattled social landscape unscathed. She had always seen herself as British first and foremost. But in South Africa, for the first time she had had to choose whether she was Black or white. Up until then, she had always been both."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's time in South Africa, and music under apartheid, in the New Statesman here.
"Avril's great-grandson Oliver Dashwood is still discovering her scores and letters in boxes that are kept in his family home..."
Listen to Leah's BBC Radio 3 documentary about Coleridge-Taylor, Carwithen and Howell here.
"As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The story of being British until you’re not – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the British during the second world war and survived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation, who built postwar Britain out of the rubble, but still face legal challenges around their relationship to the only place they’ve ever called home."
Read Samantha on playing Coleridge-Taylor's music in the twenty-first century for The Guardian here.
"What I found in these boxes was a powerful story about art, about politics, and about identity and belonging... Coleridge-Taylor’s Comet Prelude is the musical memory of a unique historical moment. While she was composing this piece, Coleridge-Taylor was confronting what it meant to be a mixed race woman in two different political contexts. She was dealing with what it meant to be a citizen of a given country and what the limits of that citizenship were. And she was also learning what music can offer, if anything, in the face of political brutality."
Listen to Leah's BBC Radio 3 essay on Coleridge-Taylor's Comet Prelude here.
"Avril emerged from a very young age with a remarkably developed, unique musical voice. The feel for harmony that is so distinctive about her late music is already present in the earliest songs. And she is clearly a composer who writes with the performer in mind. Moments that seem peculiar on the page, as if they are unfinished thoughts that lead nowhere, suddenly make sense when you work through them at the piano, adding in physical gestures and movement."
Read about cataloguing Coleridge-Taylor's music here.
"Gwendolen often wrote music for her social circle, and so through her music we can trace her connections and influences, building a picture of her world."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's early life and music here.
"These pieces are a powerful musical testament to life on the home front, Coleridge-Taylor responding to the war in the only way that made sense to her — through her music. We know so many “war works” by men — Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, etc — but what about those written by women? Women’s lives were just as profoundly impacted by war as men’s. It would be quite bizarre if men responded to World War II in their compositions, but women did not."
Read an introduction to Sussex Landscape here.
Read the liner notes for Avril Coleridge-Taylor: Piano Concerto and Orchestral Works here.
"She christened her new persona with an orchestral tone poem, To April (1930), that progressed towards a more grand, dramatic style that was distinctively her own. That mature style synthesised the light music of her youth with influences from film music, African American spirituals as her father had interpreted them and a fascination with pastoralism that preoccupied so many British composers of the period."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's life and music in BBC Music Magazine here.
"It’s a tangled, unmistakably British history of belonging, exclusion, compromise and resilience — a history that is conveniently smoothed out when stories like Avril’s aren’t told. But Avril’s afterlife is only just beginning to take shape."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's legacy in Prospect Magazine here.
"As the daughter of the mixed race Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and the white British singer Jessie Walmisley, Coleridge-Taylor had been naive to think that she might leave South Africa’s embattled social landscape unscathed. She had always seen herself as British first and foremost. But in South Africa, for the first time she had had to choose whether she was Black or white. Up until then, she had always been both."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's time in South Africa, and music under apartheid, in the New Statesman here.
"Avril's great-grandson Oliver Dashwood is still discovering her scores and letters in boxes that are kept in his family home..."
Listen to Leah's BBC Radio 3 documentary about Coleridge-Taylor, Carwithen and Howell here.
"As I sat with these shadows, I sensed a familiar story. The story of being British until you’re not – one that calls to mind African-descended soldiers who fought on behalf of the British during the second world war and survived only to be denied their due compensation. And the Windrush generation, who built postwar Britain out of the rubble, but still face legal challenges around their relationship to the only place they’ve ever called home."
Read Samantha on playing Coleridge-Taylor's music in the twenty-first century for The Guardian here.
"What I found in these boxes was a powerful story about art, about politics, and about identity and belonging... Coleridge-Taylor’s Comet Prelude is the musical memory of a unique historical moment. While she was composing this piece, Coleridge-Taylor was confronting what it meant to be a mixed race woman in two different political contexts. She was dealing with what it meant to be a citizen of a given country and what the limits of that citizenship were. And she was also learning what music can offer, if anything, in the face of political brutality."
Listen to Leah's BBC Radio 3 essay on Coleridge-Taylor's Comet Prelude here.
"Avril emerged from a very young age with a remarkably developed, unique musical voice. The feel for harmony that is so distinctive about her late music is already present in the earliest songs. And she is clearly a composer who writes with the performer in mind. Moments that seem peculiar on the page, as if they are unfinished thoughts that lead nowhere, suddenly make sense when you work through them at the piano, adding in physical gestures and movement."
Read about cataloguing Coleridge-Taylor's music here.
"Gwendolen often wrote music for her social circle, and so through her music we can trace her connections and influences, building a picture of her world."
Read about Coleridge-Taylor's early life and music here.
"These pieces are a powerful musical testament to life on the home front, Coleridge-Taylor responding to the war in the only way that made sense to her — through her music. We know so many “war works” by men — Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, etc — but what about those written by women? Women’s lives were just as profoundly impacted by war as men’s. It would be quite bizarre if men responded to World War II in their compositions, but women did not."
Read an introduction to Sussex Landscape here.
Scores and other recordings
All Avril Coleridge-Taylor's manuscripts are available to view at the Library of the Royal College of Music in London. Their Manuscript Accession List has full details and is available to search here. Please contact Peter Linnitt for further details.
Chineke! Orchestra's world premiere recording of Sussex Landscape appears on their 2022 Coleridge-Taylor disc, alongside orchestral works by Samuel including his Violin Concerto.
Beyond Twilight: Music for Cello and Piano by Female Composers by Alexandra Mackenzie and Ingrid Sawers features two songs by Avril in cello transcription, 'Who knows?' and 'Can Sorrow Find Me.'
Chineke! Orchestra's world premiere recording of Sussex Landscape appears on their 2022 Coleridge-Taylor disc, alongside orchestral works by Samuel including his Violin Concerto.
Beyond Twilight: Music for Cello and Piano by Female Composers by Alexandra Mackenzie and Ingrid Sawers features two songs by Avril in cello transcription, 'Who knows?' and 'Can Sorrow Find Me.'