Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912)
The son of an Englishwoman and a man from Sierra Leone, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor showed great musical talent from childhood, entering the Royal College of Music at fifteen alongside Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. His outstanding achievement was the Longfellow trilogy for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra: Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (1898), The Death of Minnehaha (1899), and Hiawatha's Departure (1900) — within a few years, one of the most popular works in the choral repertoire. His compositions inspired the formation of the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society, a group of 200 Black singers in Washington, D.C., who invited him to conduct his own works. He died at 37, leaving a legacy that is finally receiving the recognition it deserves.
Learn more at:
