Charles Kaufmann: Manuscripts of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor]

Charles Kaufmann, Director of The Longfellow Chorus of Portland, Maine writes:

Lost SCT Things

One thing that's been located is the manuscript of Six Songs, composed around 1893. My interest in this has always been "The Arrow and The Song." As a Longfellow poem, it matches the mission of my non-profit organization, The Longfellow Chorus: to organize and maintain a chorus to perform and record vocal and choral settings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetry.

I had seen this song listed in Avril's catalog of unpublished SCT works, and I'd been wondering about its location for awhile. Last spring I asked Jonathan Butcher if he could look into it in London, and his friend Martin Eastick turned it up in the archives of Stainer & Bell Ltd. S & B mailed me copies of the manuscripts of the songs "Ah! Tell Me Gentle Zephir," "Keep Those Eyes," "We Watched Her Breathing Through The Night," "She Dwelt Amidst The Untrodden Ways," "The Arrow And The Song" and "Why Does Azure Deck The Skies?"

Arrow and Song was sung on the October 9, 1893, recital with Ethel Winn, soprano, and SCT, pianist. These are student works -- he was 17 or 18 when he wrote Arrow -- but he gave it his best shot, so to speak, and it has a bit of his later spark.

Charles Kaufmann