Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was an English composer who achieved such success he was called the "African Mahler". Coleridge-Taylor was born in Holborn, London, to a Sierra Leonean Creole father, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, and an English mother, Alice Hare Martin. They were not married. He was born Samuel Coleridge Taylor. His surname was Taylor, and his middle name of Coleridge was after the poet Samuel Taylor Col... more

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (15 August 1875 – 1 September 1912) was an English composer who achieved such success he was called the "African Mahler". Coleridge-Taylor was born in Holborn, London, to a Sierra Leonean Creole father, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, and an English mother, Alice Hare Martin. They were not married. He was born Samuel Coleridge Taylor. His surname was Taylor, and his middle name of Coleridge was after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was known by his middle name to his family: Coleridge Taylor. He later affected the name Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, allegedly following a printer’s typographical error. The father returned to Africa by February 1875. He was appointed coroner for the British Empire in the Gambia in the late 1890s but was unaware of his son's existence. Coleridge-Taylor was brought up in Croydon by Martin and her father Benjamin Holmans, whose other son was a professional musician. He studied the violin at the Royal College of Music then composition... less