The Hiawatha man

by Geoffrey Self

Born in 1875 the son of an English woman and a coloured African doctor, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was in the first decade of the twentieth century a figure of considerable influence in British music. He was regarded by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and many others as by far the most able young musician of his generation, yet within a few years of his early death in 1912 he passed into obscurity. For a while he had been perhaps the most popular composer in the country - performances of his Hiawatha far exceeded in number those of any other work of the time. This new biography surveys critically the music and considers the reasons for its neglect today. It examines the influences on the man and composer, and in turn his impact above all on negro communities, especially in the USA, which he visited on several occasions with triumphal success. The book includes a number of photographs and over 100 music illustrations, previously unpublished material and correspondences and a complete list of works