[Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor; “Croydon’s Public Hall on George Street,
as it was just over a century ago, when Coleridge-Taylor often
conducted music at the venue. Picture from Jeffrey Green’s
collection”]
Posted
on June 17, 2012
Ahead
of centenary concerts to celebrate the life of Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, his biographer, JEFFREY GREEN, details the
composer’s life in Croydon
Theobalds Road was
widened by demolishing the houses and shops on the southern side in
the mid-1870s, and amongst those forced to relocate was the family of
Benjamin Holmans.
Born in coastal
Kent, the Holmans family had moved to Holborn’s Theobalds Road in
the late 1850s. Holmans was a farrier or blacksmith, a useful
occupation in a horse economy (steam trains and ships took goods and
people great distances, but local transport was all horse-drawn).
With the demolition
of Theobalds Road, the Holmans relocated to Croydon – Benjamin and
his wife Sarah, the farrier’s daughter Alice, and Alice’s baby
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The boy’s father, a London-qualified
doctor from Sierra Leone, had returned to Africa probably unaware
Alice was pregnant, and he had no part in the child’s life.
Born in August 1875, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor spent most of his life in Croydon. He lived at 67 Waddon New Road, the centre of a block of three houses (all since demolished) by Pitlake bridge, which crossed the railway tracks near West Croydon station. There were slaughterhouses across the tracks, and the winds brought those smells and noises which added to the puff and rattle of trains, making the boy’s home an unlikely one for an artist.
He
went to the nearby school, sang in church choirs, had violin lessons
from his grandfather then professional tuition, and shortly after his
15th birthday in 1890 he started at the Royal College of Music in
Kensington.
In 1893
Coleridge-Taylor was awarded a composition scholarship, studying with
Charles Villiers Stanford into 1897. His student creations attracted
praise in the London and musical press; his Four
Characteristic Waltzes
were available for a variety of forces – solo piano, piano with
violin, small orchestra and large orchestra. In the winter of
1897-1898 he worked on Hiawatha’s
Wedding Feast,
a cantata (orchestra with choir and solo vocalists) and then was
commissioned by Gloucester’s music festival to create an
instrumental work (he supplied the Ballade
in A minor).
[Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at
AfriClassical.com,
which features a comprehensive Works List and a Bibliography by Prof.
Dominique-René de Lerma,
www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.
We
are collaborating with the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation of the
U.K., www.SCTF.org.uk]
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