Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 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 Effect
- 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
- Postscript
- Appendix 1 The Song of Hiawatha
- Appendix 2 Further Reading
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - The Early Years
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- 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 Effect
- 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
- Postscript
- Appendix 1 The Song of Hiawatha
- Appendix 2 Further Reading
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The gentle slope of Bandon Hill cemetery beyond the war memorial has the appearance of a stunted forest of stone angels, slabs and crosses as you approach the grave of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Its musical notation and poetry is ornate by the standards of neighbouring graves. The next row has a simpler memorial commemorating Emma and Walter Walmisley and their third daughter Louisa. The graves are linked as Louisa's sister Jessie was the wife of Coleridge-Taylor. In tracing the early life of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor it has been necessary to find other hidden connections.
This suburban south London cemetery where the composer's body was interred in September 1912 is far from the Circular Road cemetery in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where his grandparents’ sepulchre stands near the entrance. In 1869 Sally and John Taylor's youngest son made the long journey from Sierra Leone where the Atlantic coast of Africa begins its east-west axis. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor's son was born in London in the summer of 1875.
Coleridge-Taylor's father was a self-motivated migrant seeking an education and professional qualifications who would have found that the British regarded Africa as a continent of mysteries. Lands bordering the Mediterranean were known through the Bible. Older people knew of the Barbary pirates; and also within living memory were the exploits of the French Foreign Legion and the conquest of Algeria.
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- Information
- Samuel Coleridge-TaylorA Musical Life, pp. 3 - 22Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014