Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

During the late 1890s and early 1900s, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was a popular and important British composer. Respected by his contemporaries, such as Sir Arthur Sullivan, Sir Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, he attracted the attention of the British music critics who followed his career with curious interest and often placed him in a class with other noted composers. A prolific composer during his short lifetime, he received great public acclaim and became known both nationally and internationally. Born of a West African doctor and a British mother, Coleridge-Taylor belonged to two decidedly different cultures. Therefore, his compositional style was affected by two underlying currents: the classical tradition that dominated his training at the Royal College of Music, and the Negro folk music that was introduced to him through contacts with members of his father's race. This volume traces the development of his compostional style, from his final years at the Royal College of Music, to the time of his death in 1912. The author uses examples from selected works to show the influence of classical procedures, West African and African-American elements, and English poetical dramas.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Well before his early death in 1912, this African-British composer fully deserved the great popularity he enjoyed, particularly for a few splendid choral works. His three visits to the US were major cultural stimuli for the Harlem renaissance and the subsequent emergence of a distinctly American music. The prime biographical source for Coleridge-Taylor is W.C. Berwick Sayers's Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Musician: His Life and Letters (1915), which is faintly and redundantly echoed in most subsequently published life histories. Thompson's work is not a biography. The author (director of music at New York's Abyssinian Baptist Church) attempts to break away from the most didactic and sterile academic analytical procedures, with incomplete success. The result is tedious reading for anyone interested in a conceptual approach. The treatment lacks conclusion and does not relate themes, keys, measure numbers, chords, and formal patterns to the musical thoughts of the composer's contemporaries or his touching struggle to identify himself with his African heritage. The bibliography does not note new editions of the literature or any publications since 1979, evidence that the book is based on a 1981 dissertation. The author did not aim for a synthesis that would have aided either performers or those theorists concerned with really significant stylistic and cultural features. Acquisition of this title might thus be limited to large libraries with comprehensive music collections. Graduate; faculty. D.-R. de Lerma; Lawrence University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Jewel Taylor Thompson (BS, Virginia State University; MA, PhD, Eastman School of Music) is an associate professor, Hunter College/CUNY, where she teaches music theory and solfege. She is also Minister of Music at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York, where she directs three choral ensembles and serves as part-time organist. Several of her choral arrangements are published by Morning Star Music Publishers, St. Louis, MO.