[Fantasiestucke
for String Quartet, Op. 5 (20:55);
Five Negro
Melodies for Piano Trio (18:10); Nonet
in F Minor (26:40);
Coleridge Ensemble; AFKA SK 543 (1998)]
The
English historian Jeffrey Green is author of Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, a Musical Life,
published by Pickering & Chatto Publishers (2011). He is also a
Guest Blogger at AfriClassical. This is his third contribution:
Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor and W.E.B. Du Bois
by
Jeffrey
Green
W.E.B.
Du Bois met Coleridge-Taylor at the Pan-African Conference in London
in 1900 and during later visits to England. He visited the composer
and his family in Croydon and sent his friend a copy of The
Souls of Black Folk
(published in 1904). Letters to and from Du Bois from
Coleridge-Taylor and his family include the following:
In
January 1905 the composer wrote from 10 Upper Grove, South Norwood
(Croydon) to Du Bois to thank him for a copy of Credo
– ‘it hangs in a most conspicuous position in our Dining room,
where everyone can see it’ and asked for a portrait photograph, for
Coleridge-Taylor had seen ‘an excellent one’ when in New York.
Credo
was a black manifesto, likened to Martin Luther King’s I
have a Dream.
On 1 June 1911, when Du Bois was scheduled to be in London for the
Universal Races Conference, Coleridge-Taylor invited him to Upper
Grove – ‘most certainly we shall expect you to call on us
FIRST’.
The composer’s daughter Gwendolen [later Avril]
married in 1924, and as Gwendolen Coleridge-Taylor Dashwood wrote to
Du Bois in late 1925 from her home in Coulsdon. She sent copies of a
Hiawatha
Calendar
hoping these would interest Du Bois. Replying in early January 1926
Du Bois said that advertising calendars had taken over the market and
the Crisis
had ceased issuing calendars and so he held no hopes for her project
in America. He ended by passing his wishes to her, her husband, her
mother and brother.
On
22 January 1926 he wrote to London congratulating the composer’s
son Hiawatha on his marriage, and asked for a photograph for the
Crisis
as ‘your father’s many friends would appreciate it’. Hiawatha
Coleridge-Taylor had married pianist Kathleen Markwell in late 1925
and their card is also in the Du Bois papers.
On
7 November 1928 from Aldwick, the house in St Leonard’s Road,
Croydon where the composer had died in 1912, his widow Jessie wrote
to Du Bois thanking him for the copy of his new novel Dark
Princess.
In
January 1929 Hiawatha Coleridge-Taylor wrote seeking advice from Du
Bois as he hoped to publish some of his father’s works in America
and sought ‘a Negro publishing house’. Du Bois on 18 January
told him to consider the large publishing houses such as Schirmer,
Ricordi and Ditson [Ditson had published Coleridge-Taylor ’s
Twenty-four
Negro Melodies
in 1905].
There
are several letters to and from the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral
Society of Plymouth (England) in the 24 letters that emerge when you
enter ‘Coleridge’ in the site: credo.library.umass.edu. This was
a pioneering enthusiastic group, founded in 1920 and had African
American tenor Roland Hayes at its first concert. One of its patrons
was Pixley Ka Seme, a South African who had studied in New York and
Oxford and then issued, in 1911, the clarion call for unity among
black South Africans which led to the founding of the African
National Congress.
The
Du Bois Papers have long been available on microfilm but they were
not in any order or indexed. The two volume biography of Du Bois by
David Levering Lewis (1993, 2000) of over 1400 pages has Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor indexed just three times. From the 24 documents now
on line we could conclude Coleridge-Taylor and his family enjoyed
their friendship with the American. What would we give to know what
the two men talked about in England over a century ago?
[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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