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Summary
One of the few dark-skinned citizens of Edwardian Croydon is Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He achieves world recognition as musician and composer. He plays his part also in the struggle for racial equality and becomes a parable for modern black consciousness.
Croydon, England - today.
We open on 21st-century Croydon - its towering skyline, its bustle, its sleek modern trams. Then to another dominant feature - the Fairfield Halls - and a full house for a performance of Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha trilogy.
Croydon - 1881
Violin teacher Joseph Beckwith notices from his window a seven year old black boy in the street, carrying a violin case. The boy lays down the case and joins in a game of marbles.
Beckwith, intrigued, goes out, speaks with the boy and learns that his name is Samuel Coleridge Taylor, known as 'Coleridge'. The youngster, uninhibited, is easily persuaded by Beckwith to show his violin and give a one-minute concert.
Greatly impressed, Beckwith accompanies Coleridge to the boy's humble home, meets his Caucasian mother and offers to give the boy lessons. Coleridge meanwhile, rewarded with a penny, runs to a music shop and spends it on manuscript paper.
With Beckwith the boy progesses so much that a benefactor undertakes to finance his entry into the Royal College of Music.
College - and love.
At the Royal College of Music in London other students note with fashionable disgust that Coleridge is both black and working class. But one student free of prejudice is Jessie Walmsley. She provides piano accompaniment for Coleridge's Violin. Eventually their friendship turns to love. In due course the couple marry in defiance of Jessie's embittered, sharp-tongued father.
Royal Albert Hall and William Du Bois
After a performance of Hiawatha's Departure composed by Coleridge and conducted by him in the great London concert hall, American professor William Du Bois, also of mixed blood, introduces himself to Coleridge. Du Bois' conviction that the black race is destined to be saved by its exceptional men so impresses Coleridge that he offers to help in the cause.
U.S.A.
Through the offices of black American businessman Andrew Hilyer, Coleridge is invited to conduct his own music in Washington. On arrival at Boston quayside he is mobbed by both black and white press. Nonetheless he is soon to see the effects of prejudice as he journeys by train to the capital.
Washington.
Coleridge is by now so renowned that President Theodore Roosevelt is amongst the many to shake his hand.
Through Coleridge's persistence, when he conducts Hiawatha he has under his baton a large black American choir and, uniquely, The Band of the US Marines.
The Washington triumph leads to an invitation from Carl Stoekel, a white multi-millionaire, to compose for Stoekel's music festival.
Home Again.
Back in Croydon, and with his rights lost to publishers for a pittance, Coleridge returns to the round of composing, teaching and adjudicating in order to make ends meet. Jessie warns him that he is dangerously overworking.
U.S.A. beckons -again
During such hard times, another invitation to cross the Atlantic is a welcome surprise for Coleridge..
At New York's Carnegie Hall Coleridge is now dubbed 'the African Mahler' by the musicians as he rehearses his work The Bamboula with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.. During a spring tour Coleridge, inspired by the Connecticut blossoms, is moved to write A Tale of Old Japan. Du Bois and Stoekel laud his success in a white man's world and his contribution to the advancement of the black race. Stoekel commissions another work from Coleridge, a Violin Concerto.
Finale
Home once again, Coleridge works relentlessly. He is finalising the Violin Concerto when serious illness overtakes him. He collapses in West Croydon railway station. Three days later, in bed, but with manuscript pen in hand, Coleridge dies, at the age of 37.
To quote from the fitting epitaph by the poet Alfred Noyes "....He lives while music lives...."
***** END *****
Footnote: "Samuel Coleridge Taylor's Hiawatha was as popular in the 1900s as Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals are today "
Norman Lebrecht, London Evening Standard April 7th 2004.
The author reserves all rights in this treatment © 2006 Barry Coward
Character List
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