Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Jan 16, 2024 | wpr.org | Stephanie Elkins |Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor arranged African-American spirituals and traditional music from Africa for classical piano. “What Brahms has done for the Hungarian folk music, Dvorak for the Bohemian and Grieg for the Norwegian, I have tried to do for these Negro melodies,” Coleridge-Taylor wrote about his collection of classical piano arrangements, “24 Negro Melodies.”Coleridge-Taylor was born in London in 1875 to a father from Sierra Leone and an English mother.