Racial descriptions of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor : Hiawatha's Wedding Feast to...?

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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
from the Sunderland Daily Echo
immediately before the first public performance of
Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, 15 November 1898

The public rehearsal and public performance of Coleridge-Taylor's Ballade in A minor at the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival brought his name into prominence. The much-heralded private performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast followed by its public performance in Sunderland made him almost a household name. As with any young "celebrity", people wanted to more about him, particularly when they learned he had African ancestry. The usual "coloured" was used to describe his skin, though there is one intriguing description of him as "a very dark gentleman". A gentleman who was "very dark"? Apparently so.

His ancestry caused more problems, with some partially-informed journalists calling him "West African". When his engagement to Jessie Walmisley became known in September 1899, there is at least one hint that a mixed-race marriage may not have been acceptable to some people. Very few would have been aware of her own Anglo-Indian ancestry.

1898

"THE PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY. TO-MORROW'S CONCERT

At a time like the present, when new musical works are eagerly sought for by conductors of choral and societies, it is most difficult to come across a composition of a high order containing ideas that are striking and good and quite away from the beaten track. The Sunderland Philharmonic Society, always to the fore in promoting the best interests of the musical public, has not been slow to take up one of the freshest and most attractive cantatas lately written. 

HIAWATHA’S WEDDING FEAST.

for tenor solo, chorus, and orchestra (words by Longfellow), will be given on the 16th inst. in the Victoria Hall under circumstances the most favourable; the composer will himself conduct the performance. Mr S. Coleridge-Taylor has, within a short period, become both prominent and eminent. Born in London on August 15th, 1875, he is quite young, and has evidently a brilliant career before him. Endowed with great musical gifts, and having had the advantage of a first-class musical training at the Royal College of Music, under the guidance of Professor Villiers Stanford, and surrounded by the best musical influences, he has worked unflaggingly and to good account. 

His father, a medical man, was born in West Africa, and his mother was English. This

ADMIXTURE OF NATIONALTIES

has, no doubt, had something to do with the distinct and characteristic flavour which gives individuality to his music. The great success of his orchestral ballade at the recent Gloucester Festival has quickly been followed by another in the work under notice, which was performed for the first time only a few days ago in London. That Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast is destined to very considerably enhance the composer’s reputation leaves little room for doubt. Indeed, the pronounced opinions of those who were fortunate enough to hear the Royal College performance the other night is a proof of the fact. 

How much Mr Coleridge-Taylor has been influenced by this or that composer is not of so much importance as that he has ideas of his own, and is sufficiently resourceful to be able to make a remarkable use of them. His quaintness of rhythmical effect, vigour of thought, and colouring of a vivid kind, and his exceedingly clever management of both vocal and orchestral material, at once arrest the attention of an audience. " - Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette - Tuesday 15 November 1898

"On Friday night we were all invited to the Royal College of Music to hear a promising though rather crude cantata, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, by the young West African composer, Mr. Coleridge Taylor. The place was vastly overcrowded, as is, indeed, usually the case with practically a free show. Personally, of course, I do not complain because being compelled to stand in a crush at the back of the so-called "hall," my shoulder was utilised as a convenient rest by an extremely pretty hospital nurse, who was endeavouring to balance herself on a chair. I was, at any rate, in pleasanter circumstances than my colleagues of the Daily Telegraph and the Athenaeum, who, as no chairs were reserved for them, were glad to seat themselves on the floor. Close by Mme. Liza Lehmann was in a similar predicament." - Truth - Thursday 17 November 1898

"Four valses were given for the first time as a concluding item. They were by Coleridge Taylor, who is undoubtedly coming man. His ballade, composed for the Leeds festival, gained him immediate notoriety. He is only 23 years of age, and is a West African. Me. Godfrey is endeavouring to arrange with him to conduct one of his own works later in the season, and we hope he will do so." - Bournemouth Guardian - Saturday 10 December 1898

"The cantata Hiawatha's Wedding Feast formed the concluding part of the programme. It is quite a new composition from the pen of Mr. Coleridge Taylor, a gentleman of colour, and this was but the third or fourth time that it has been performed in public. It is quaintly picturesque and decidedly original, the score being marked by much novelty of treatment. It was capitally rendered by both band and chorus, and the only solo, which partakes of the character of recitative, was sung by Mr. Branscombe. The music, as becomes the celebration of a wedding feast, is at times joyous and hilarious and throughout is quite original and withal very tuneful and entertaining." - Torquay Times, and South Devon Advertiser - Friday 16 December 1898

1899

"Two of Mr. Coleridge Taylor’s works were presented. The first-was the orchestral Ballade in A minor, which was brought out at the last Gloucester Festival, and by which the young coloured composer—who is of London birth—secured a reputation. It is strong, forceful music, fashioned economically, and endowed with an element of the barbaric that is far from unwelcome." - Batley Reporter and Guardian - Friday 17 March 1899

"There are those who ill-naturedly attribute Mr. Coleridge Taylor's success to his personal colour, but few unprejudiced persons can listen to such music  as this of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast without being struck by its absolute freshness of idiom, together with a charm of treatment that succeeds in making much out of apparently very little." - Leeds Mercury - Friday 12 May 1899

"Mr. Coleridge-Taylor, a very dark gentleman, the composer of Hiawatha Sketches, accompanied little Maudie on the piano as she gave them. These sketches were most spirited and original—a tale, a song, a dance, and delighted the audience, who would have liked to encore them all." - Wrexham Advertiser - Saturday 8 July 1899

"The second part of the concert opened with the cantata, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, by S. Coleridge Taylor, a modern rising composer. His nationality invests him with additional interest. This work has been performed only once or twice previous to its performance at Tenbury, but we understand that it is in the programme for the next Leeds Festival." - Tenbury Wells Advertiser - Tuesday 11 July 1899

"MR. COLERIDGE TAYLOR BETROTHED. It was, by the way, mentioned in Queen's Hall during the Worcester rehearsals, in which Mr. Coleridge Taylor took part, that the young West African composer is engaged married to Miss Walmesley [sic], who, the Daily News understands, was a fellow pupil of his the Royal College of Music." - Gloucester Citizen - Friday 08 September 1899

"The opening programme to-day included four works, first and foremost being a novelty in the shape of a Solemn Prelude for orchestra, composed by the young Anglo-African, S. Coleridge Taylor, to whose pen we owe Hiawatha’s Wedding [sic] and other works which are in the enjoyment of popularity. Sympathy seems to be claimed in advance of effort, and especially in the blend of the unmusical Anglo-Saxon with the passionate musical impulses of the African. What may result from such a combination we know in part, and there may be stronger evidence to come, but, though Mr. Coleridge Taylor is an interesting personality, and brings a "new" strain into English blood, he cannot be held exempt from criticism. Indeed, he is one to look after sharply, lest there be manifestations not healthy. 

At no previous time in the history of art was the nomenclature of musical compositions so vague as now. When, in past days, a musician composed a work in overture form he called it an overture as a matter of course, and everybody knew what was meant. Forms are now largely out of fashion, above all among writers for the orchestra, who decline to be fettered, and claim the full liberty enjoyed by, as said a Fourth of July orator, "the soaring and screaming eagle of our boundless prairies." The result is that we have a crowd of works which are essentially nondescript. Terms of description do not arise out of them, but are arbitrarily applied to them. Just as Chopin called his effusions preludes, ballades, and what not of ambiguous meaning, so here is Mr. Coleridge Taylor with his Solemn Prelude.

I am not going to quarrel with the name, but an innocent curiosity prompts me to ask what in the consciousness of the composer does this prelude indicate as coming after it? Has Mr. Taylor something to follow "up his sleeve"? I remember that Sir Hubert Parry once produced an overture to an unwritten tragedy. Here is an example for writers of preludes that, as far as they go, precede nothing. 

The work which has suggested these remarks is slow throughout (lento), in the key of B minor, and scored for full orchestra. Though in no recognised form, its subjects, of which there are three so dealt with, come up for treatment from time to time, and the whole piece ends with references to the matter, of its opening. It is very carefully orchestrated, and shows the knowledge and skill which are now so common in that branch of a composer's work. Some of the themes, moreover, are distinctly melodious, but their beauty is often disfigured by scrappy treatment or veiled by restless and harmonic progressions. 

This simply means that the Prelude suffered from the spirit of modern orchestral writing, an evil spirit which wars against intelligibility and beauty, which obscures the light that radiates from all true art. I honestly doubt if the Prelude left any save the very vaguest impression upon those who heard it to-day. 1t seemed, in my own case, to lack definiteness of idea and clearness of utterance. I could not discover what it was trying to say. Had it simply claimed to be a study of the dissonant the pretension would have been willingly allowed, but the music must have a purpose other that. What is it? The piece itself does not answer Call it prelude to Dante’s ‘Purgatory' and many will accept the idea as appropriate, but then the composer may not approve, and he is the arbiter. 

Mr. Taylor conducted in person with gratifying success, the fine orchestra following his indications with zeal and discretion." - Daily Telegraph - Thursday 14 September 1899

"Mr. Coleridge-Taylor, who was a student at the Royal College of Music, is about to marry an English lady was also a student at the College" - Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Friday 15 September 1899 

"There not any means such crowded congregation as the case on the Elijah day, when Mr. Coleridge-Taylor, the African genius, ascended the dais, but nevertheless, there was a most satisfactory attendance. Mr. Coleridge-Taylor’s contribution was a Solemn Prelude for full orchestra (op. 40), which he had composed specially for the Festival, and of course conducted himself. Unfortunately, the wonderful and most talented musician had only been able to devote limited time to rehearsal, and had not had any opportunity of giving much instruction to the band. It cannot, however, be said that this new work is by any means so good as his Ballad in A Minor, given for the first time at Gloucester last year, the favourable reports which had reached Worcester of the work hardly being borne out" - Gloucestershire Chronicle - Saturday 16 September 1899

"Mr. Coleridge Taylor is also here, the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Lee Williams, who are likewise chaperoning the West-African complexioned composer's affianced bride." - Worcestershire Chronicle - Saturday 16 September 1899

1903

"Mr. Walter Crane is 58, Mr. Keir Hardie is 47, “T. Nesbit’ and Mr. Maarten Maartens are each 45; the Emperor of China is 32 and Mr. Samuel Coleridge Taylor, the Anglo-African musician, is 28." - Labour Leader - Saturday 22 August 1903

Racial descriptions of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor : From childhood the Ballade in A minor

 

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, aged about ten, 
while studying violin with Joseph Beckwith

The composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born at 15 Theobalds Road, Holborn, now part of the London Borough of Camden, in 1875. 

His father, Dr Peter Hughes Taylor was from Sierra Leone. In the terminology of the UK National Office of Statistics in 2021, he was "Black or African". His mother, Alice Hare Martin, was "White". 

Dr Taylor and Miss Martin were not married. There is no evidence that he knew of Alice's pregnancy when he returned to Africa before his son's birth.

Newspaper references begin in 1886 when Samuel was eleven, and are uniformly positively for the next ten years, praising his violin playing and, later, compositions. At this stage of his career very few items mention the colour of his skin. Those that do, use the word "coloured", a word which at the time was seen as both respectful and respectable.

1886

"a little coloured fellow of 11 years" - Willesden Chronicle - Friday 3 December 1886

1888

"a little coloured boy with a fine voice" - Christian World - Thursday 12 July 1888

1895

"A new clarionet [sic] quintet from the pen of Mr Coleridge Taylor, the clever coloured student in the Royal College of Music" - The Scotsman - Thursday 11 July 1895

1896

"Mr. S. Coleridge Taylor, a young composer of African extraction, who is still a student the institution over which Dr. Hubert Parry presides" - Globe - Thursday 23 January 1896

"The first three movements of and very clever symphony, by the African student, Mr Coleridge Taylor, again drew attention to the young composer" - Irish Times - Saturday 7 March 1896

"Another attractive item in the programme was a symphony in A minor by Mr. S. Coleridge Taylor, who is an African." - Leeds Mercury - Saturday 7 March 1896

"A work of considerable promise was forthcoming in a Symphony by a student, Mr. S. Coleridge Taylor, a young gentleman of colour, who is possessed of original gifts" - Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News - Saturday 14 March 1896

"A native West African musical composer has produced a symphony in London, which is described as original, effective and promising. His name is Coleridge Taylor. and he is only twenty years old. He is not a black man, however." - Lyttelton Times (New Zealand) - Thursday 11 June 1896

"Mr. S. Coleridge Taylor, scholar of the Royal College of Music, is perhaps one of the most interesting. He has hitherto been introduced to the public chiefly by Symphony, given a few months ago at St. James’s Hall, and by several recently published pieces for violin and piano, a list to which must now be added a Quartet for strings performed last night for the first time at a College concert. Probably there is no severer test to which a composer can put himself than this form composition, and it would be scarcely true to say more of Mr. Coleridge Taylor's Quartet than that, like his former works, it is inspired with a distinct individuality, uncouth, barbaric, it may be, but for that very reason refreshing in the present, and encouraging for the future. Of course Mr. Taylor’s powers have not as yet found anything like their full development; his uncouthness is occasionally rather tame, and his barbarism decidedly mechanical, depending often for its effect upon a tom-tom accompaniment in the bass to a banshee melody above." - Globe - Friday 26 June 1896

1898

"A new orchestral Ballade in A minor by the young Anglo-African, Mr. Coleridge-Taylor" - Leeds Mercury - Friday 5 August 1898

"Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor, who has composed a Ballade in A Minor for the Festival, is an Anglo- African, born in London in 1875." - Gloucester Journal - Saturday 27 August 1898

"The Musical Times has also a portrait of Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor. The writer says:

It is very seldom that a young composer under twenty-three years ago receives the distinction being asked to a work for one of the Festivals. Some people speak of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor, who has thus been favoured, as a "coming man", while there are those who make bold to say that has arrived already. Coleridge-Taylor was born in London on August 15, 1875. His father, a doctor of medicine, was a native of Sierra Leone, on the West Coast of Africa, while his mother was an Englishwoman. “None of my people were at all musical from serious point of view,” Mr. Taylor informs us. He began to study music when was six years old." - Gloucestershire Chronicle - Saturday 3 September 1898

"Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor is a coloured gentleman. His father was a doctor, a native of Sierra Leone, West Coast of Africa, and his mother was an Englishwoman." - Gloucester Journal - Saturday 3 September 1898

"The programme also included Mr. Coleridge Taylor's Ballade in A minor—after which Sir Arthur Sullivan warmly congratulated the swarthy composer" - Gloucester Citizen - Friday 9 September 1898

"On resuming after the interval, Mr. Coleridge Taylor, the  African composer, and a musician of great promise, came forward to conduct his Ballade in A Minor. This proved to be a highly effective work, the themes being melodious, while the scoring exhibited skill and a feeling for the picturesque. The influence of Tschaikovsky is evidently strong with the coloured composer, who delights in showy taste. Mr. Coleridge Taylor was warmly congratulated by Sir Arthur Sullivan and several other well-known musicians, and applause was showered upon him by the select party of connoisseurs present." -Evening Irish Times - Friday 9 September 1898

"Another work that will bring additional fame to the composer is a Ballade in A minor, by S. Coleridge- Taylor, a work written especially for the Festival. It will unquestionably rank amongst the best of short orchestral compositions. In parts it is perfectly thrilling in its barbaric splendour, and will prove a great treat. At its conclusion to-day the composer was warmly applauded by the select few who were privileged to be present, including Sir Arthur Sullivan, Dr. Lloyd, and others." - Gloucestershire Chronicle - Saturday 10 September 1898

"Then Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor ascended the platform to conduct his Ballade in A Minor. The dusky composer's advent had evidently been awaited with considerable interest, and he received quite an ovation from orchestra and auditorium; and the applause was redoubled at the conclusion of his striking and original composition, some portions of which were tried over a second time [at this rehearsal]." - Gloucester Citizen - Tuesday 13 September 1898

"A COLOURED COMPOSER. The big success of the Gloucester Festival so far lies with Mr. Coleridge Taylor, the first coloured subject of the Queen who has challenged the opinions of the supporters of a great British Musical Festival." - Yorkshire Evening Post - Tuesday 13 September 1898

"also the Ballade for Orchestra of Mr. Coleridge Taylor, a young mulatto composer." - Westminster Gazette - Tuesday 13 September 1898

"There is a decided novelty at the Gloucester Musical Festival this week. It is the production of a work by Mr. Coleridge Taylor, the first coloured subject of the Queen to whom that honour has been accorded. Mr Taylor's mother was English, and he was born in London, but his father was a doctor from Sierra Leone, and his bushy hair and swarthy skin unmistakably betray his origin. His orchestral piece in A Minor has been received at rehearsals with great favour." - Western Mail - Wednesday 14 September 1898

"The advent of Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor to conduct his orchestral work was awaited with considerable interest and some curiosity; and when the dusky Anglo-African appeared on the platform he received a flattering greeting. Mr. Coleridge-Taylor is justly regarded as a budding genius. In his case musical talent is not supposed to be hereditary; at any rate he has not derived it either from his father, a doctor, who was a native of Sierra Leone, or his mother, who was of English birth." - Gloucester Citizen - Thursday 15 September 1898

"Very different was the greeting accorded to the young coloured composer, Mr. Coleridge Taylor, who on stepping on to the platform to conduct his new orchestral piece in A Minor had round upon round of ringing cheers. Mr. Taylor has erroneously been described as a West African by birth. His father, it is true,, was a medical man front Sierra Leone. but the young composer's mother was British, and he  himself was born in London. He was one of the best of Sir Charles Parry's pupils at the Royal College of Music, and he is now a professor of the violin. Several of Mr. Taylor's works have been heard at the Royal College concerts, and the young man, who is now only three-and-twenty, his swarthy hue and bushy hair indicating beyond question his African origin, has for some time past been watched with interest as a coming composer. That he has that spirit of diffidence, and an enthusiasm for the ideal, which have marked so many great composers from Mendelssohn downwards, may be judged by the fact that since his piece was rehearsed in London he has made several alterations in it. It is rather absurdly described as a Ballade, and it is quite possible that it has a programme, the secret of which, of course, it is wholly impossible to guess. The influence of Tschaikowsky and Berlioz, and even of Raff, is to a certain extent noticeable, but Mr. Taylor is beyond question a composer with an individuality of his own, and is full of the spirit and fire of a race warmer in blood than our own." - Daily News - Thursday 15 September 1898

"Mr. Coleridge Taylor came forward as a complete stranger, and his new ballad in A minor excited lively anticipations. Mr. Coleridge Taylor is not yet known to fame or the musical dictionaries, but he has, none the less, begun to make his mark, and his future career promises to be no empty one. The young musician’s father was an African doctor of medicine, and from him Mr. Coleridge Taylor inherits the facial and hirsutical attributes of the African. We have lately had the spectacle of an Indian Prince showing us how to bat; now, we have another of Eastern descent giving proof of remarkable artistic gifts. Though of unmistakable African type, Mr. Coleridge Taylor is a Londoner by birth, and a late pupil of Professor Stanford at the Royal College of Music. Among his compositions are a symphony, a clarinet quintet—which was brought out in Berlin by no less famous sponsors than Dr. Joachim and  Professor Stanford—a set of Fantasie Stucke [sic] for string quartet, and some African romances for which the negro poet, Paul Dunbar, wrote the text. The new ballade an its dusky composer had a remarkably cordial reception from the crowded audience. The novelty is of the rhapsodic order, and a rhapsody indeed, composer intended to entitle it. That is has a programme is frankly confessed, though what this is Mr. Coleridge Taylor does not care to divulge. One cannot call the music uncivilised, since it highly sophisticated, and even Wagnerian; but there is a welcome touch of the barbaric about it, and an alien echo of some Kaffir war dance, or the weird chant of the witch doctor, possibly, that makes itself felt through all the teaching of the schools employed in a manner that suggests a compromise between the methods of Wagner and those of Edward German. -  Leeds Mercury - Thursday 15 September 1898

"The chief item of the programme, however, was undoubtedly Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor’s orchestral ballad, which the young composer conducted himself. This promising dark-skinned musician, with his thick curly hair, who is the son of a medical man who practised in Sierra Leone, was, however, born in the metropolis." - St James's Gazette - Thursday 15 September 1898

"A third feature of importance in last night's programme was a so-called Ballade—why Ballade I cannot conceive—written for orchestra by Mr. Coleridge Taylor, a young musician who represents, through his father, a Sierra Leone doctor, the race of Ham, and derives from his mother an Anglo-Saxon strain. In this gentleman's appearance the African predominates, as appears to be the case in his music also; and the novelty of Mr. Taylor's apparition as a composer trained in England accounts, perhaps, for the unusual enthusiasm of the Gloucester public in his favour. The Ballade, so called, is really a rhapsody of the most violent description, indicating, however, very great talent. together with a temperament and disposition which may eventually lead to interesting, possibly to valuable results. I am not going to discuss the work, but simply to observe that already, through the Russians, we possess enough of music tinctured by the barbaric. Our art is not, I hope, to be controlled by primitive instincts, but the hope is faint, seeing how the public applaud that which is bizarre, extravagant and startling. The best wish for the clever Anglo-African is that he may exercise restraint and attain to the chaste dignity of highly-cultured art. This he may do without injuring that which gives character to his music. Mr. Taylor, being only twenty-four, is necessarily at a formative stage. His development will be worth watching." - Daily Telegraph - Friday 16 September 1898

"I am inclined to think that the urchins who sell programmes and music in the streets of Gloucester possess fine sense of humour. If not, why should they have offered copies of Wesley’s motet, In Exitu Israel, which is by means of the emotional order, under the title, In Excite You? By way of compensation, however, they sold programmes for Wednesday’s concert in the Shire Hall as "books for this evening’s service." This was peculiarly malapropos, since the most striking piece in the programme was Mr. Coleridge-Taylor’s orchestral ballade. That might suit the service in which the Priests of Baal leap upon the altar, and cut themselves with knives and lancets, but would be singularly out of place in connection with any more civilised rites. As matter of fact, it is just the refreshing barbarism of this “ballade,” or fantasia, that is among its chief recommendations. No doubt its youthful composer has heard Tschaikowsky’s Pathetic Symphony more than once, but I am inclined to think he is something other than a mere imitator. When one learns of his semi-African parentage, or sees his strongly characteristic head and dusky complexion, it is easy to find in his music traces of the untrammelled and untutored savage, but one needs not to go behind the score to appreciate its wild and youthful vigour. His melody has a welcome ring of emotional feeling, and he handles the orchestra as if to the manner born. I believe he is only 23 years old, but at any rate he is so young one feels that here is a composer to be reckoned with. His career will be watched with intense interest." - Globe - Saturday 17 September 1898

"Another very interesting personality has been introduced to the general musical public in the composer of the orchestral Ballade in A minor, which was performed in the Shire Hall on Wednesday evening. Mr. S. Coleridge Taylor is an Anglo-African. Born in London twenty-three years ago he was a scholar at the Royal College of Music, and though he had already written many pieces for the violin, for which his name was favourably known to critics, his "arrival" as an artist of undoubted originality and creative power will date from the production of the Ballade. Admirably played by the Festival band under the composer's direction, it was received with an enthusiasm which will not readily be forgotten, and which was the more remarkable from the fact that the tropical temperature of the gas-lit Hall, made applause an exertion. Tropical, too, was the music, instinct with the racial feeling, yet displaying in a very high degree a scholar's command of the resources of tonal art." - Cheltenham Examiner - Wednesday 21 September 1898

"Of the numerous novelties produced, the most successful was a Rhapsody in A minor by a young African musician, Mr. Coleridge Taylor. Somebody, it seems, without consulting the composer, re-christened this piece a Ballade, which it is not. Composers, from Beethoven downwards, have suffered from this species of impudence, although it was hardly thought that any one would try it on in the present day. At any rate the composer himself never called his piece a Ballade, and he thinks the term Rhapsody more appropriate; an expression of opinion which most of us will cordially share." - Truth - Thursday 22 September 1898

"One of the features of the Festival was heard played therein by Mr. Coleridge Taylor, a young coloured gentleman, who has studied to excellent purpose at the Royal College of Music. The Gloucester authorities invited him to write something for the Festival, and Mr, Coleridge Taylor suggested that a short cantata of his, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, should should be taken up, but an orchestral work being preferred, he produced a Ballade in A minor, which was practically completed in the short space of two days. This Ballade was remarkably successful in performance under the composer's direction at the only secular concert of the Festival. Objection has been taken to its title, but if the very vaguely significant heading of Ballade may be regarded as suggesting a nearer approximation to musical form than Rhapsody, then we prefer the former, for, if rhapsodic in spirit, the new work is possessed of a first and second subject, with an episode of some pretence to development.

Mr. Coleridge Taylor is a capital conductor and thorough musician. His Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast,  speedily win favour with choral societies, to whose attention it may be recommended. It been published by Messrs. Novello." - Leeds Mercury - Friday 23 September 1898

"MR. COLERIDGE-TAYLOR’S BALLADE IN A MINOR.  Civilisation has done much for man in transforming his manners, his habits, and his morals (or want of them). It has weakened the brutality of his vices, and widened and strengthened the field and scope of hie innate and acquired virtues. It has been the mightiest factor in the redemption and purifying of mankind, and yet, even at its highest development, history teaches that civilisation is but as a cloak or garment, which man wraps about himself in order to dissemble the true nature which expediency prompts him conceal. 

So in our smooth, curtailed, over-civilised little lives we live heeding and knowing little or nothing of the volcano of passion of lawlessness of fierce and primitive nature that lies hid all the while beneath, the calm exteriors of our fellows. But a word a cry, throb of music, and the old deep chords are fired in moment into burning flame, and the things of expediency are put behind us and done with, and the whole man is aflame with the vital, mighty instincts of the underlying and explosive life of the senses. 

To these reflections were brought, or rather were they forced upon us during the performance of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor’s marvellous Ballade in A minor given at the Shire Hall Concert on Wednesday evening. Strong and vital as though freshly sprung from the fiery, hot chaotic heart of the mine of life, the wild, strange, rhythmic music echoed and throbbed, its barbaric opening passage powerfully impressing one with a sense of the fantastic, untamed and untameable emotional life from which it issued. Redolent of half-savage, primitive force and power, it seemed to be horn of the wild emotional sense-life of a people in intimate touch with the elemental life of nature. The passion of love seemed to burn in it fiercer than death, and blood-red in its violent beauty; the passion of war, of battle, and conflict; and the eager, unchecked delight in feats of daring, of bloodshed, and courage—perhaps even the passion of death, too, but (decked out, fantastic in gaudy-coloured trappings and vestments—mocking at life and its impuissance) all the great, changeless, primary, lawless instincts, and needs of life when lived with the blood hot in the veins, and youth and love bright in the eyes—palpitated, vibrating in the air—awakening by the power of the music. 

For once music seemed no longer the slave of a master, but a free, chainless, fetterless element above law, above limit, a free elemental agent, pregnant and alive with the essence and heart of original life and being, echoing the elemental force and vigour, the excitement and madness, the glee and the brutal ecstasy in living, that lies hidden deep, deep down in the heart of each living creature,— impinged upon, cheeked, hindered, hampered though it be by the bonds of usage and custom, by the weight of time and established rule, the whole balanced order, in a word, of the ordinary inexpressive, unemotional life of routine. 

Here in these northern latitudes, in their rigour and severity, moral well as physical, whore Stoicism plays presiding genius, and where emotion is curtailed, despised, and overborne, such music as that of this Ballade of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor comes as a revelation and as revealer of the "secrets of the mysteries." Its composer is man of the South, and therefore endowed by natural heritage, with the gift of warm, rich, extravagant and glowing imagination, heated with all the vigour, coloured with all the fervid splendours, burning with the excessive abundance and exuberance of a race only recently evolving towards manifestation of its art and its genius. It is, comparatively, so young in time that it leaves the older races of civilisation in astonishment at the development it already begins to express; and once its pitch of expression reached, its power and spirit fully awakened and aroused, what secrets may it not have to unfold, what strange, wonderful messages to send forth along the line of the older civilisations? 

In this light, Mr. Taylor’s work is like a hand beckoning from another world, like a rift opening on the mysteries of the unknown things, for his art bids fair to be the exponent of new and hitherto neglected phases of life and emotion, and to be the herald of later manifestations of the inner life, the tears and joys and all the primitive unspoilt sensational development of a people who have not yet spoken their word in the manifestation of the spirit and "talents" of the nations. - Gloucester Journal - Saturday 24 September 1898

"Of a widely different order was the other chief novelty— the sensational ballad of Mr. Coleridge Taylor. The composer is only twenty-three, and is the son of an African doctor. At the age of eighteen he won the Composition Scholarship at the Royal College of Music, where he has since worked under Villiers Stanford. His work is daringly weird and original, full of outbursts of wild melody, and with a sort of barbaric splendour which fascinated band and audience alike. We shall hear more of this young genius in the near future." - Gentlewoman - Saturday 24 September 1898

"The "Colour Line" and The Daily News. It is generally known by those who have looked into the question, that although the coloured man in America has been "freed," he is by no means as free in that country as the term implies. To us, however, and we believe to every true Socialist, the colour of a man's skin is a mere detail of absolutely no moment, and we do not hesitate to say that we accept man on his merit, without regard to his nation, race, creed, or colour. 

This is as it should be, and we, therefore, always regret to see any indication that in this country the narrow view of the average American on the colour question is accepted in the slightest degree. We noticed what we consider the wrong note struck in connection with The Daily News report of the musical festival held recently in Gloucester. Says the writer, when referring to the success attending the production of an orchestral piece by a coloured composer (Mr. Coleridge Taylor): "Mr. Taylor has been erroneously described as a West African by birth. His father, it is true, was a medical man from Sierra Leone, but the young composer's mother was British, and he himself was born in London," and then the writer proceeds to describe him as "only three and twenty years of age, his swarthy hue and bushy hair indicating beyond question his African origin." 

Why this attempt to belittle his African blood? An African is the equal of an Englishman, and not being responsible for his colour he should not be made to feel that it in any way disqualifies him as a man. The fact that Mr. Taylor's mother was "British" does not make his music any the sweeter, why then emphasise the nationality of the mother at the expense the father. It is not creditable for The Daily News to, in the least degree, lend itself to the upholding of race prejudice." - Labour Leader - Saturday 5 November 1898

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