Category Archives: Life
SCTF Speakers Join Panels For Commemorative Events
Two Autumn 2012 events in London (on Friday 5th and Tuesday 16th October) will commemorate the centenary of the death of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, with speakers from the SCT Foundation presenting their findings on the composer’s life and works. Friday 5th … Continue reading
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: The Centenary Legacy (1st September 2012)
1 September 2012, was the centenary anniversary of the death of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Below is the appreciation of Coleridge-Taylor, man of music and protagonist for equality, which I wrote to mark this significant milestone for the Huffington Post UK, along with … Continue reading
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: a musical life by Jeffrey Green – a review by Dominique-Rene de Lerma
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: a musical life by Jeffrey Green Dr Dominique-Rene de Lerma writes: Over more than three decades, English historian Jeffrey Green has presented a series of discoveries on Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), an English composer who did not follow his contemporaries … Continue reading
A radio programme-maker asks: Do you recall ‘Hiawatha’ at the Albert Hall, or elsewhere?
Andrew Green writes: Can you help? In this, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s centenary legacy year (2012), I’ll be fulfilling a long-held ambition to make a radio programme focusing on the famous Albert Hall ‘Hiawatha’ performances of the 1920s and 30s – the high-point in … Continue reading
Dominique-Rene de Lerma donation of Coleridge-Taylor bibliography and list of works to the SCTF website
In a hugely significant step towards realising our intention to bring Coleridge-Taylor’s life and works to public attention as he deserves, the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation was delighted in 2012 to announce that the distinguished American researcher and scholar Dr. Dominique-Rene de Lerma generously entrusted us … Continue reading
Chumki Banerjee writes about The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation: Uncovering long lost musical jewels, the quest continues
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s early chamber works – discovering the Piano Quintet op.1
Ten years ago today (7 November 2001) was the first performance in living memory of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Piano Quintet, op.1. The work was part of a lunchtime recital programme by players from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, from a score discovered … Continue reading
SCTF invites articles about Coleridge-Taylor’s US impact
The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation is inviting articles for publication on this website from historians, scholars and other commentators about the impact of SCT’s life and work in the United States, from the time of his visits until the present. We are … Continue reading
“I want to be nothing in the world except what I am – a musician.” (Discovering ‘Thelma’, Coleridge-Taylor’s only opera)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s sole opera, Thelma (Op.72), was composed in 1907-09, but only in the past few years has it been given any serious consideration. Here Dr Catherine Carr recounts how she came to learn of the opera. She also shares some insights into the research she undertook to bring Thelma to life, and tells us about some of her many fascinating discoveries concerning this centrally important and hitherto neglected work…. Continue reading
Recalling my Father’s reminiscences on Hiawatha
Richard Gordon-Smith writes: My father David Gordon-Smith* was born in 1915. In the very class-conscious (by today’s standards) 1920s and ’30s my father’s parents would have been considered ‘lower middle class’. Their cultural aspirations included occasional theatre and concert attendance, musical … Continue reading
Patrick Meadows, publisher of SC-T scores: an interview with myself
Patrick Meadows writes: During my tenure as Director Artístico of the Deià Festival in Mallorca between 1978 and 2008, every year, about the time the concerts were to begin, at least once and often several times, someone from the newspapers, … Continue reading
Coleridge-Taylor conducts his work in Liverpool (19 October 1908)
We have here photographs from an original published programme covering three concerts in the Fifth Season of the ‘Liverpool Symphony Orchestra Ltd’. The second of these was a concert in the Sun Hall, Kensington, on Monday, 19 October 1908 commencing at 8 pm, the latter half of which was works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, conducted by the composer himself. Continue reading
The case of the patched trousers: was Coleridge-Taylor impoverished as a student?
There has been quite a debate about whether Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was, or was not, financially comfortable as a child and young man. Jeffrey Green‘s meticulous research, for instance, has established that Coleridge-Taylor’s grandfather / father-figure, Benjamin Holmans, was a man of significant … Continue reading
The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society in Croydon (1994-)
The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society was inaugurated in Croydon in 1994. It was founded (and then chaired) by Daniel Labonne, who at the time lived in that historic town, just south of London. The SCT Society was active for some ten years, and it was Daniel … Continue reading
A Note On Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Early Work
Coleridge-Taylor’s early works were for chamber ensembles – probably the only performance forces available to him at the time. These works lay almost completely unacknowledged for the best part of a century. The Opus 1, or first formal work, Piano … Continue reading
A Tribute To Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
The black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 – 1912) is known almost exclusively for his large-scale work, ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’. There is however much more to this fascinating man than just one work, including the story behind his very early … Continue reading
