Physical description:

.1 l.f. (2 folders)
 

Dates:

1906-1912. 1924-1938.
 

Provenance:

Purchased from Lisa Cox, Exeter, Devon, England May 1991.
 

Biographical sketch:

Born near London 15 August 1875 composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor received his musical training at the Royal College of Music in London. He began teaching at Croyden Conservatory during his student days, and from 1903 until his death was a professor of music at Trinity College of Music in London.

In addition to his teaching he was active as a conductor and was called upon to direct festivals, particularly in the performance of his own music.

He began composing as a child and published his first composition when he was sixteen. In November 1898 his best-known work Hiawatha's Wedding Feast (text from Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha) was performed at Royal College and from this period on his works were widely performed in England and abroad.

He toured the United States three times (1904, 1906, 1910). His interest in Negro folk music was stimulated by contacts early in his career with poet Laurence Dunbar, whose poems Coleridge-Taylor set to music, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who died 1 September 1912, was the most important composer of African descent of his time. He left a large body of music in a variety of forms. and some of his music has retained its popularity over the years.

--The above is quoted from the sketch of Coleridge-Taylor in Eileen Southern's Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians, pp. 78-79.
 

Scope and content:

This collection consists of 7 programs (1906, 1908, 1909, 1911 and 1912) from recitals and concerts in which Coleridge-Taylor performed or conducted and/or in which his works were performed and souvenir programs from performances of Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall, in 1924, 1929, 1930, 1934 and 1938.
 

Location:

This collection is filed by accession number with other manuscripts.
 

Related material:

A full score of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast purchased with these materials is filed in special collection scores (SP-040174).