He was buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery, and his funeral became a
major public event. A memorial concert produced £1,440 for
the family, a tidy sum given that his income in the year of his
death has been estimated at less than £200. The Guildhall
School of Music arranged bursaries for both of his children, and
they went on to become professional musicians themselves. His widow
received a Civil List pension of £100, but the music world
was shocked by the fact that Coleridge-Taylor and his family were
not to receive any royalties from the fabulous commercial success
of Hiawatha's Wedding, and the scandal fuelled the formation
of the Performing Right Society as a lobby for legislation on rights
and royalties.
Hiawatha's Wedding Feast continued to be hugely popular
throughout the 1920s and 30s, but after the Second World War Coleridge-Taylor's
music seems to have disappeared from sight. He left, however, the
legacy of a talent which drew on his ambiguous and difficult origins
without shutting him off from the currents of his time and place.
He had become, against all odds, part of his culture's tradition,
while openly declaring the mixture of elements and ideas which moved
him. His ability to flourish in between cultures and to base himself
at the junction of different tracks, continues to give him, and
his music, the power to speak to our times
References and further reading
Read a fuller version of Mike Phillips' essay in Adobe Acrobat
(pdf format) 96KB.
Guest-curated for the British Library by Mike Phillips
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