October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who is someone else entirely) was born in London in 1875 to Alice Hare Martin. His parents were unmarried and his father Daniel Taylor – from Sierra Leone – left the UK not knowing Alice was expecting his child.

Alice named her son after the poet, and he was brought up in Croydon. Alice’s family was a musical one, and Coleridge-Taylor studied at the Royal College of Music from the age of 15 including composition under professor and composer Charles Villiers Stanford.

On graduating he became a professional musician, being appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and conducting the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire. He was also encouraged by composer Edward Elgar, and on a tour of America in 1904 met President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, an unusual event for a man of African ancestry.

Coleridge-Taylor’s most famous and popular composition was Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, and indeed when he married and became a father he named his own son Hiawatha. Unfortunately, like many composers of the day, his financial situation was far from secure and he had sold the rights to the piece outright. After his untimely death from pneumonia at the age of 37, which some attributed to the stress of his financial situation, his case contributed to the establishment of the Performing Rights Society.

Coleridge-Taylor is buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery, Wallington, Surrey – now in the London Borough of Sutton.

More about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor