This is a copy of a programme note I wrote for Croydon Music and Art’s recent performance of this extraordinary piece. I’ve added some images to the story so you can see a little more! It was written to help children and young people understand more of the context about the music they were playing.
Avril Coleridge-Taylor was born in South Norwood in 1903 and lived in 66 Waddon New Road in Croydon. She was the daughter of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the famous Black British composer, and so she grew up in a house of music: he was a successful composer and conductor not only in London’s music scene but around the world. This happiness was very brief, aged just 9, Avril experienced the tragic and very public loss of her Dad, who died from pneumonia aged only 37. She spent much of the rest of her life navigating his legacy and fighting to preserve it, while building her own career as a composer and a conductor.
She began composing at 12, and over her lifetime produced an array of music – some of which under the name of a man – much of which has been unperformed. She conducted at the Royal Albert Hall when she was 30 and formed the Coleridge-Taylor Symphony Orchestra in 1941. With her brother she worked hard to secure her dad’s legacy: while successful in his life, his impact began to be forgotten. It’s only in recent years his full musical contribution has been reassessed, and with that, Avril’s herself.
This piece, the Comet Prelude, was written at least partly on board a plane in 1952 – Avril was a passenger on the first ever jet flight, the De Havilland Comet, which would carry regular commercial passengers from London Heathrow to Johannesburg, South Africa. The beginning of the jet age was a time of great excitement about being able to reach far off destinations. It seems like she was brought onto the flight especially to compose while on board the plane – to show how thrilling air travel be. The plane stopped at several destinations to refuel including Rome, Beirut and Khartoum, stops which influenced her writing of the score.
Avril was going to Cape Town to conduct for the South African Broadcasting Company, something which at the time in the country was limited to white people. This was because of a policy that enforced the racist separation of people to give white people the most power, a system called Apartheid. Though she performed in South Africa for two years, when the South African government realised that Avril had a Black father and a white mother, her bookings were cancelled.
Understanding Avril and what she was doing in South Africa isn’t straightforward, and it is difficult to draw clear conclusions about it. [NB. Leah Broad and Samantha Ege have a fascinating piece on this here] Some have suggested she wanted to pass as white in order to change the government’s opinions, others that she wanted to build a career she wasn’t able to have in the UK due to sexism. We just don’t know, but what we do know is that the experience changed her, and she went on to support many other Black musicians in her later career, for example, she formed and led a choir of performers of colour in the UK in 1956. It’s worth remembering she was a composer and a conductor, and that she wrote this piece to conduct it.
Sarah Whitfield 