PROGRAM NOTES
There is power in a name – to connect people around the world and across generations. This program seeks to explore one such legacy of love, between Samuel Coleridge Taylor and his namesake, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. We’ll travel from Taylor’s England to Perkinson’s America, and encounter the bonds that tie these composers together along the way.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Five Fantasiestücke, Op. 5 and Hiawathan Sketches for Violin and Pianoforte, Op. 16
On September 2, 1912, The Times in London ran the obituary for Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. It read, in part: “We regret to announce that Mr. Coleridge-Taylor, the composer, died yesterday . . . he left his home Wednesday afternoon, intending to visit the Crystal Palace, but was taken ill near West Croydon Railway Station and fell. Recovering sufficiently to return home by tram, he at once went to bed and a doctor who was called stated that he was suffering from influenza. Pneumonia supervened and Mr. Coleridge- Taylor died at 6 o’clock last evening. The sudden death of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor at the age of 37 will be felt as a serious loss by all who are interested in musical matters.”
The son of an African doctor and an Englishwoman, Coleridge-Taylor showed an early talent for music as both a violinist and composer. His first work was published when he was only 16 years old, and his first symphony was written four years later. He went on to study at the Royal College of Music with renowned professor Charles Villiers Stanford, alongside his contemporaries and classmates Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst (whom Coleridge-Taylor had beat out for a scholarship). Many of his works began to be performed frequently in public during his student days, including the Five Fantasiestücke, or fantasy pieces. These are strikingly gorgeous works, each a sparkling individual jewel in its own right, but strung together to even greater impact.
Success came swiftly for Coleridge-Taylor in the days immediately following his graduation. In 1898 he received his first commission from the prestigious Three Choirs Festival on Edward Elgar’s recommendation, the result of which was the Ballade in A Minor. For some time, however, Coleridge-Taylor’s attention had been focused on the composition of a secular cantata based on the poem, “The Song of Hiawatha,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Some of the first iterations appeared as the Hiawathan Sketches for Violin and Pianoforte, Op. 16, published as early as 1887. Soon after the Three Choirs Festival premiere, Coleridge-Taylor’s former teacher, Stanford, conducted the premiere of his secular cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. It became a hit overnight on the scale of Handel’s Messiah and inspired a group of African-American singers in Washington D.C. to form the Coleridge-Taylor Society. They sponsored what would become multiple invitations for Coleridge-Taylor to travel to the United States in 1904, 1906, and 1910. During these visits he was invited to visit President Roosevelt at the White House and embarked on multi-city tours across the United States conducting his own works in performances alongside African-American musicians and composers such as Harry Thacker Burleigh. Upon returning to England, Coleridge-Taylor enjoyed a thriving career as a conductor and teacher and wrote hundreds of works before his premature death.
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-2004)
String Quartet No. 1 “Calvary” and Louisiana Blues Strut: A Cakewalk for Violin
A remarkably versatile musician who worked within multiple arts disciplines, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was born in Manhattan to a pianist, organist, and theater directing mother who named him after the legendary Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Early on his evident musical abilities were nurtured and encouraged, leading to entrance into New York’s High School of Music and Art. During Perkinson’s time there, his compositions won recognition, and he was awarded the LaGuardia Prize for Music.
After high school, Perkinson explored an interest in becoming a public school teacher and enrolled at New York University before feeling an irresistible pull back to the arts, eventually transferring into the Manhattan School of Music. He continued his composition studies at Princeton University with Korean-American composer, Earl Kim (who was himself a student of Ernest Bloch and Roger Sessions), and simultaneously studied conducting during summers at the Berkshire Music Center, (later re-named Tanglewood).
Perkinson’s career soon led him into creativepartnerships with a list of collaborators including Marvin Gaye, Lou Rawls, Max Roach, and Harry Belafonte. In addition to his work with musical artists, Perkinson wrote many works for premiere dance ensembles such as the Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey and produced numerous television theme songs and scores for films including A Warm December, written and directed by Sidney Poitier. In 1965 he co-founded and conducted the Symphony of the New World, the first racially integrated orchestra in the United States. Following a rich teaching career, he served as Coordinator of Performance Activities at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Black Music Research.
Drawing from the immense breadth of musical styles in which he was well-versed, Perkinson’s output and music pulls from nearly every era of music in multiple corners of the world. His String Quartet No. 1 gets its name from the spiritual “Calvary,” the melody of which provides the musical basis for the piece. Paying tribute to the blues through fiery virtuosity, Louisiana Blues Strut was originally meant to be a movement of another piece for solo violin, Blues Form/s.
Kathryn J. Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.
