[© National Portrait Gallery, London 2012]
National Portrait Gallery
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor 1875-1912
17 July 2012 - 17 March 2013
Room 29 case display
Free
Voted among 100 Great Black Britons, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a composer and conductor whose choral trilogy Hiawatha was popular through to the 1940s. This display marks the centenary of his premature death at 37.
Born to a white British mother and a father from Sierra Leone, he
grew up in Croydon. At the Royal College of Music, his contemporaries
included Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. His first major
commission was from the Three Choirs Festival. His extensive output
ranges from late-Romantic orchestral pieces to suites inspired by
African and Gospel music, from recital songs to an opera based on Norse
legend.
The display documents Coleridge-Taylor’s increasing fame, with an
early publicity photo complete with facsimile signature, inclusion in a
group image of fellow-composers (including Elgar and Ethel Smyth) and
posthumous renown on a cigarette card. An intriguing oil study painted
when he was a child is complemented by a stunning portrait by E.O Hoppé.
[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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