'Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life,' by Jeffrey Green, To Be Published June 2011

[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor]

The Afro-British composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at AfriClassical.com. The website has long relied on authoritative research by the author Jeffrey Green, whose much-anticipated book is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life. Pickering and Chatto Publishers in the United Kingdom have announced a publication date of June 2011:

“Pickering and Chatto Publishers

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life

Jeffrey Green

Hb: c.256pp: June 2011

978 1 84893 161 9: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00

978 1 84893 162 6

“At the beginning of the twentieth century, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912) was one of Britain’s most popular and acclaimed composers. The illegitimate child of an African doctor, Coleridge-Taylor managed to escape his humble roots by studying composition at the Royal College of Music, where he won a scholarship in 1893. Though he composed mainly for piano and violin, his Song of Hiawatha was performed nationwide for choir and orchestra to great critical acclaim. He died from pneumonia at the age of thirty-seven.

“Green’s study is more than a biography of an Anglo-African composer. Using a wide range of public and private records, this extensively-researched work becomes a social history based around an artist who lived at the height of British imperialism. This was an era marked by widespread racism and conservative attitudes, and yet Coleridge-Taylor became a distinguished member of British society. The first comprehensive study of Coleridge-Taylor’s life for almost a century, it reveals how class-ridden Britain could embrace even the most unlikely of cultural icons.

“Readership

Theatre Studies, Musicology and Social History

“Contents

1 The Early Years

2 The Royal College of Music

3 The Promising Young Composer

4 The Wedding Feast

5 A Sentiment Prevalent Here

6 Intensifying the Effort

7 The International Star

8 A Stalwart Member of the Profession

9 A 'Definite Place for the Negro in the World's History'

10 A Tale of Old Japan

11 Requiem

12 The Legacy”