It wasn’t just a cultural event that had been years in the making. It was the cultural event of the era, and would remain without parallel for decades hence. The arrival of Afro-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in America in 1904 – to perform as conductor for his internationally acclaimed masterpiece – was a dream come true.  It was particularly significant for a handful of privileged African-Americans, whose lofty primary motivation was to convince talented fellow Black citizens to persevere against obstacles more formidable than those they would have faced in Europe at that time. And it was thoroughly appreciated that Coleridge-Taylor’s knowledge of, and respect for, their musical traditions inspired his best work.

Success at a Young Age

I have long been looking for a new English composer of real genius, and I believe I have found him. –Auguste J. Jaeger, music critic, 1898

Born in London, the son of a Creole doctor from Sierra Leone who was a descendent of African-American slaves, and an Englishwoman, as a child prodigy Coleridge-Taylor was trained to master the violin by his maternal grandfather and read music before learning the alphabet. His genius was recognised early on. Counted among his admirers was the revered composer, Sir Edward Elgar. At age 23 on 4 November 1898—just one year after graduating from the Royal College of Music— the modest, engaging, somewhat reserved (he abhorred public speaking), and amiable young man lived up to his early promise, scoring his first big success with Ballad in A Minor that premiered in London’s Crystal Palace. A few weeks later he astounded the world of classical music with Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, his magnum opus and the centerpiece of what became the trilogy cantata formally titled, Scenes From The Song of Hiawatha (hereafter referred to as Hiawatha). The oeuvre was based on the American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s beloved epic romantic poem that featured Indian (Native American) protagonists. Hearing it today, one might judge it somewhat sentimental but as one music critic reminds us, at the time of its early performances it ‘…vied for Mendelssohn’s Elijah for the distinction of occupying second place to Handel’s Messiah in the affections of the British public…’ and that as a contemporary of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, Coleridge-Taylor was ‘once better known than either’ of them.

Awareness and Shared Identity, The Basis of Mutual Esteem

The first African-Americans to have meaningful influence on the young phenom were poet-novelist Paul Lawrence Dunbar — with whom he arranged a collaborative recital in 1896, —followed in 1897 by Frederick J. Loudin, manager of the touring Fisk Jubilee Singers, who introduced Coleridge-Taylor to Black spirituals (the overture to Hiawatha was based on  Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, a Jubilee standard). He would later say that Loudin was ‘the best friend I ever had’. On at least three occasions he met with Atlanta professor W.E.B. Du Bois, initially at the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900. That same year well-connected Washington, D.C. socialite Mamie Hilyer, a competent pianist, visited the composer—a man who was glad to incorporate African and African-American musical elements in his works —at his home in Croydon. She was so impressed with Coleridge-Taylor’s elegant qualities that she later sent him Du Bois’s recently published book, the now classic The Souls of Black Folk, which he declared was ‘the finest book I ever read by a coloured man, and one of the best by any author, black or white.’ 

Influential communicators Du Bois, Hilyer, and a few other African-Americans like activist-author Mary Church Terrell and long-time friend and well-connected diplomat-businessman Henry F. Downing, spread the news of Coleridge-Taylor’s professional triumphs.  This would help whip up enthusiasm and get people to seriously think of inviting the composer to visit America and, maybe, God willing, direct a performance there too. They also helped educate Coleridge-Taylor regarding the history and characteristics of his brethren across the Atlantic.

Two years prior to being vaulted to celebrity status, Black Americans abroad began sending reports home about Coleridge-Taylor, a totally unexpected rising star, which found prominent space in Black newspapers across the nation. One researcher demonstrated with examples that he ‘was consistently hailed a “musical genius,”’ ‘the idol of the music-lovers all over England,’ and ‘The Lion of the Hour’ (Cleveland Gazette); ‘the first colored composer of distinction’ (Wisconsin Weekly Advocate); the ‘musical lion of London’ and the ‘musical wonder of the age’ (New York City’s The Colored American); ‘perhaps the greatest (composer) in the world’ (Washington Bee). Meanwhile, on another level, sojourners, tourists, and assorted others humanised the musical wunderkind as the epitome of British refinement. Mamie Hilyer described Coleridge-Taylor as having a ‘simple and unaffected manner’, possessing a ‘magnetic personality’ and an ‘intense interest in his people in the United States.’ 

Fetching an Idol

It didn’t take a lot of arm twisting to get Coleridge-Taylor to agree to sail to America in 1904. The groundwork had been expertly prepared by Mrs. Hilyer and her husband, Andrew. The latter had the foresight to found The Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society in 1901 in Washington, one of the principal cultural centres of Black America, which diligently rehearsed Hiawatha. In April 1903, it pulled off an impressive rendition using mostly local talent, delighting a sold out, racially integrated audience of 2,000 at the Metropolitan African Methodist Church.  

The Hilyers informed Coleridge-Taylor of the event, documented with clippings of glowing published reviews. Soon thereafter he tentatively accepted their invitation to come to Washington, writing: ‘No performance has ever interested me half as much as the “coloured” one, and I would give a great deal to be with you all.’ When important details were finalised he wrote: ‘I don’t think anything else would have induced me to visit America, excepting the fact of an established society of coloured singers; it is for that, first and foremost, that I am coming, and all other engagements are secondary.’ He even brushed aside their fear that he would be unnerved by the kind of overt racism commonly displayed by white Americans, assuring the Hilyers, ‘As for the prejudice, I am well prepared for it. Surely that which you and many others have lived in for so many years will not quite kill me.’   

The African descended minority in the U.S. was in the midst of yet another repressive era, with no less than 80 lynchings of Blacks in 1904 to remind them of their inability to defend themselves or improve their tenuous social standing. They had grown weary of plantation melodies, repulsed by minstrel shows, and felt embarrassed by “coon songs” that reinforced the worst stereotypes. By the time Coleridge-Taylor arrived for a 20-day stay at the Washington home of attorney-author John P. Green on November 4, 1904, Hiawatha had been performed more than 200 times in Britain. This included a performance in London’s peerless Albert Hall by the Royal Choral Society, attended by King Edward VII, with a 1,000-voice choir accompanied by a 150-instrument orchestra. Several respected American Midwest and East Coast choral groups had also sung it. As the date of the Washington performance approached, residents were giddy with excitement. A writer for the Washington Post, one of the nation’s newspapers of record, claimed ‘if you were to ask the first comer you meet in the street whether he knew Hiawatha, he would immediately be ready to whistle it.’ In between rehearsals Coleridge-Taylor received a stream of friends, sponsors, and adoring well wishers at Atty. Green’s home. 

Fulfilling Their Fondest Dream

It is well for us, O brother, that you come so far to see us.– inscription on a silver loving cup given to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, 1904.

On Wednesday evening, November 16, 1904, in Convention Hall, the city’s largest venue with a seating capacity of 3,000, Coleridge-Taylor took to the podium as maestro to synchronise an ensemble comprised of a 200-voice choir, a 52-man Marine Corps band, and the distinguished world-class baritone Harry T. Burleigh along with two other able soloists; a tenor and a soprano. As predicted, the event was  sold-out. This was the most anticipated cultural event in decades, the event hardly anyone in the city, Black or White and with pretensions of discerning taste who could afford the price of a ticket, would dare miss. In the audience sat members of the cabinet of the President of the United States, Congressmen, diplomats, civic and religious leaders, and members of the artistic community. Most had seen a scaled down Hiawatha with only piano accompaniment. Now, they came expecting a big production with the composer himself as star attraction. 

Attendees may not have been prepared to be so overwhelmed. They had been told about Coleridge-Taylor’s endearing traits —politeness, kindness, sense of humour, generosity, subdued demeanour—all easily accepted by Americans who typically and automatically credit such virtues to anyone with an upper-class British accent. While acknowledging he was below average height and was ‘delicate featured’, an editorial writer for the New York Times opined he was ‘not at all the long-haired eccentric musician.’ He continued, with a whiff of racism: ‘He is stiffly, calmly English in every inch, so English that a blind man would be moved to jeers that there was a drop of other (African) blood in him.’ The critic for the Washington Post concentrated more on the composer’s commanding stage presence and musical direction, writing: 

‘…The music (of Hiawatha) is the most perfect descriptive composition, intensely dramatic, and so rich in harmonies and delightful eccentricities that it stands in a class by itself. The orchestration is masterful and of bewildering beauty. Each chorus is finished with the most perfect phrases, carrying out the theme and the ideas expressed. Mr. Taylor used the bassoons and the oboes most effectively and delicately. He is a magnetic conductor, and has both singers and orchestra well in hand….’

A reviewer for the daily Washington Evening Star was struck by how the large chorus ‘responded almost instinctively to every move of the conductor’s baton.’ At the conclusion of the cantata, Coleridge-Taylor turned and faced what had been ‘a completely captivated’ audience, according to music scholar Ellsworth Janifer who asserted… ‘Never did a composer receive a more tumultuous ovation from his own people! The stalls and galleries of Convention Hall shook with their thunderous acclamation and their jubilant cries of praise roared through the cavernous hall.’ 

As positive publicity about Coleridge-Taylor was being validated in the collective minds of Americans, the man of the hour grew increasingly enamoured with his hosts. Biographer William C. B. Sayers explained:

‘…In America he told me he had found a more wide-spread and more frank recognition of pure music than in England; he had found surprisingly splendid orchestras, instrumentalists, and vocalists and public taste that enabled these to exist for their art. For some time, indeed, he contemplated the desirability of emigrating to this land in the future.’

One or two days later (sources differ), Coleridge-Taylor had a private meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt. The US head-of-state had wanted to greet him at Convention Hall but had had out-of-town political duties to attend. According to Terrell, upon welcoming him to the White House, Roosevelt, startled by his youthful appearance, blurted out: ‘Why, you are only a boy.’ It was said their congenial one-hour conversation touched on race relations. The meeting itself was highly unusual, if not unprecedented. Roosevelt’s dinner invitation in the White House with Booker T. Washington, the foremost Black leader of his generation, on October 16, 1901, shocked and enraged white politicians and the press in the southern states, who reacted with an avalanche of vile racist rants. However, the session with Coleridge-Taylor was ignored by the usual and reliable chorus of haters.

In a letter to the editor of the Croydon Guardian in 1912, the year of the composer’s untimely death at age 37, he stated that ‘without exception’ all of the ‘distinguished’ white folk he knew of were ‘favorably disposed towards’ persons of African heritage. Moreover, no one had shown him more courteousness than an unnamed member of the British Royal Family and President Roosevelt. To mark the momentous occasion of their meeting, Roosevelt gave his foreign guest an autographed photograph of himself to add to his collection of gifts and mementos from appreciative Americans.

The Washington performance was the first and most consequential of Coleridge-Taylor’s multiple-city tour in 1904. Over the following three weeks he travelled to and/or performed in Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, making stops at churches, schools, concert halls, and the homes of admirers along the way. It was in Boston that he first met Booker T. Washington. Though Coleridge-Taylor took the side of Du Bois in opposing Washington’s emphasis on practical industrial education for Blacks, the two hit it off immediately. Such was their rapport, that Coleridge-Taylor accepted Washington’s invitation to visit Tuskegee Institute. In addition,  Washington wrote the introduction to the composer’s 24 Negro Melodies, Op. 59, lauding him as ‘a man of the highest aesthetic ideals.’ Among other notable African-Americans Coleridge-Taylor met during his 1904 tour were author Charles Waddell Chesnutt, and violinist Clarence Cameron White. Coleridge-Taylor would eventually teach White composition in England.  

Lifted Above the Clouds      

Astonished by the high level of American musicianship and encouraged by the heartfelt encomium of his hosts and sponsors, Coleridge-Taylor toured the United States again in 1906 and 1910. Back home, he met writer-activist James Weldon Johnson, deputy head of the NAACP, in London in 1905. Alain Locke, the first Black Rhodes Scholar and the intellectual father of the Harlem Renaissance, while a student at Oxford told his mother he was ‘stunned’ by a performance of Hiawatha in London in 1908 and wanted to introduce himself to the composer. 

Given the intimidating racial climate in America, Sayers supposed that the key factor that dissuaded Coleridge-Taylor from emigrating there with his family members—a white English wife and mixed-heritage son and daughter—was the realisation that they would suffer considerably more race-related insults and discrimination there than in the UK. Nonetheless, his Black supporters were pleased that his 1904 visit and subsequent tours raised the profile of Black classical composers and musicians, as well as persuaded white cultural gatekeepers to admit the existence, legitimacy, and potential of gifted Black artists.  To date, there has been no cessation in the production of recordings of Hiawatha and his substantial body of incidental music.   

Coleridge-Taylor’s first visit to America occurred at a critical moment when African-Americans desperately needed something or someone to restore faith in themselves. They needed reassurance they were on the path to a brighter future —that Black people were as capable as white and, if allowed a fair chance, were capable of succeeding in all vocations, including the demanding realm of classical music . 

In the afterglow of Coleridge-Taylor’s direction of Hiawatha in Washington, Andrew Hilyer attempted, as best he could, to articulate to him how far-reaching an effect the event had on the emotional state of those treated as North America’s second-class citizens, writing: ‘In composing Hiawatha you have done the colored people of the U.S. a service you have never dreamed of . . . (We are) lifted above the clouds of American color prejudice, and to live there wholly oblivious of its disadvantages, and indeed of most of our other troubles’. Shortly after the illustrious composer’s death, Terrell closed her tribute to him, predicting: ‘(He) will live as long as there’s a boy or girl with Negro blood in his or her veins who has the ‘spirit of song’ in his or her heart, and his life and achievements will be a beacon of light to all who have the ambition to go on and accomplish great things in the art in which he was such a glorious star.’