- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born at 15 Theobalds Road in Holborn, London, to Alice Hare Martin (1856-1953), an Englishwoman, and Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, a Krio man from Sierra Leone who had studied medicine in London and later became an administrator in West Africa. They were not married, and Daniel had returned to Africa without learning that Alice was pregnant. (Alice's parents had not been married at her birth, either.) Alice named her son Samuel Coleridge Taylor (without a hyphen), after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
- He married a British woman, Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers. Their son Hiawatha adapted his father's music for a variety of performances.
- His daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor became a composer-conductor.
- King George V granted Jessie Coleridge-Taylor, the young widow, an annual pension of £100, evidence of the high regard in which the composer was held.
- Of mixed-race birth, Coleridge-Taylor achieved such success that he was referred to by white New York musicians as the "African Mahler" when he had three tours of the United States in the early 1900s.
- He was particularly known for his three cantatas on the epic 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Coleridge-Taylor premiered the first section in 1898, when he was 22.
- Coleridge-Taylor was 37 when he died of pneumonia. His death is often attributed to the stress of his financial situation.
- His early work was also guided by the influential music editor and critic August Jaeger of music publisher Novello; he told Elgar that Taylor was "a genius".
- By 1896, Coleridge-Taylor was already earning a reputation as a composer. He was later helped by Edward Elgar, who recommended him to the Three Choirs Festival. His "Ballade in A minor" was premiered there.
- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a British composer and conductor.
- He changed from violin to composition, working under Charles Villiers Stanford. After completing his degree, he became a professional musician; he was appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and began conducting the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire.
- Coleridge-Taylor's work continued to be popular. He was later championed by conductor Malcolm Sargent. Between 1928 and 1939, Sargent conducted ten seasons of a large costumed ballet version of The Song of Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall, performed by the Royal Choral Society (600 to 800 singers) and 200 dancers.
- A two-hour documentary, Samuel Coleridge Taylor and His Music in America, 1900-1912 (2013), was made about him and includes a performance of several of his pieces, as well as information about him and his prominent place in music. It was written and directed by Charles Kaufmann, and produced by The Longfellow Chorus.
- Coleridge-Taylor also composed chamber music, anthems, and the African Dances for violin, among other works. The Petite Suite de Concert is still regularly played.
- There are two blue plaques in his memory, one in Dagnall Park, South Norwood, and the other in St Leonards Road, Croydon, at the house where he died. A metal figure in the likeness of Coleridge-Taylor has been installed in Charles Street, Croydon.
- He later used the name "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor", with a hyphen, said to be following a printer's typographical error.
- On the strength of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, which was conducted by Professor Charles Villiers Stanford at its 1898 premiere and proved to be highly popular, Coleridge-Taylor made three tours of the United States in 1904, 1906, and 1910.
- Taylor's musical ability quickly became apparent, and his grandfather paid for him to have violin lessons. The extended family arranged for Taylor to study at the Royal College of Music from the age of 15.
- He set one poem by his namesake Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Legend of Kubla Khan".
- There were numerous musicians on Taylor's mother's side, and her father played the violin, teaching it to his grandson from an early age.
- In 1912 a memorial concert was held at the Royal Albert Hall and garnered over £1400 for the composer's family.
- The inscription on Coleridge-Taylor's carved headstone includes four bars of music from the composer's best-known work, Hiawatha, and a tribute from his close friend, the poet Alfred Noyes, that includes these words: Too young to die: his great simplicity, his happy courage in an alien world, his gentleness, made all that knew him love him.
- Coleridge-Taylor was greatly admired by African Americans; in 1901, a 200-voice African-American chorus was founded in Washington, D.C., named the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society.
- In 1894 Taylor's father was appointed a coroner in the colony of Gambia.
- Public schools were named after him in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Baltimore, Maryland.
- Due to his success, Coleridge-Taylor was invited to be one of the judges at music festivals. He was said to be personally shy but was still effective as a conductor.
- Composers were not handsomely paid for their music, and they often sold the rights to works outright in order to make immediate income. This caused them to lose the royalties earned by the publishers who had invested in the music distribution through publication. The popular Hiawatha's Wedding Feast sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but Coleridge-Taylor had sold the music outright for the sum of 15 guineas, so did not benefit directly.
- After Coleridge-Taylor's death in 1912, musicians were concerned that he and his family had received no royalties from his Song of Hiawatha, which was one of the most successful and popular works written in the previous 50 years. (He had sold the rights early in order to get income.) His case contributed to their formation of the Performing Rights Society, an effort to gain revenues for musicians through performance as well as publication and distribution of music.
- In 1899 Coleridge-Taylor married Jessie Walmisley, whom he had met as a fellow student at the Royal College of Music. Six years older than him, Jessie had left the college in 1893. Her parents objected to the marriage because Taylor was of mixed-race parentage, but relented and attended the wedding.
- In the United States, he became increasingly interested in his paternal racial heritage. Coleridge-Taylor participated as the youngest delegate at the 1900 First Pan-African Conference held in London, and met leading Americans through this connection, including poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois.
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