Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, born in 1875, was the son of an African doctor and an Englishwoman. He became one of the greatest classical composers of all time.
Coleridge-Taylor's father left his mother before he was born. It is speculated that he didn't know that she was pregnant. Coleridge-Taylor was raised by his mother with the help of her father.
Coleridge-Taylor studied at London's Royal College of Music. He proved his genius early with compositions such as Ballade in A Minor. His cantata, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, is considered his major work.
In 1904 he traveled to the United States where, according to Wikipedia, he developed an interest in his racial heritage: "He sought to do for African music what Johannes Brahms did for Hungarian music and Antonín Dvořák for Bohemian music." After meeting Paul Laurence Dunbar in London, Coleridge-Taylor set some of his poems to music. Coleridge-Taylor came to be known as the "African Mahler."
He died suddenly in 1912 at the age of 37 of pneumonia having written some 80+ compositions.
In the 1915 biography, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Musician: His Life and Letters, his biographer wrote: "although certain of his friends whose opinions I value have counselled avoidance of his racial qualities, Coleridge-Taylor never forgot them, never feared to defend them, and his music is so fraught with their characteristics that to ignore them, had it been possible, would in my opinion have been a deliberate misinterpreting of my subject."
More information: biographical essays; book-length biography.
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