b"Program NotesSamuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)Ballade in A Minor, Op. 33 Composed 1898Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer and conductor. Born of mixed racial heritage, his mother, Alice Hare Martin, was English and his father, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, was a Krio from Sierra Leone. Named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he was raised in Croydon, a large town in South London, by his mother and grandfather. Coleridge-Taylor showed early evidence of musical talent. As a young boy he had a very fine boy-soprano voice. He also showed promise on the violin and piano, and was admitted into the Royal College of Music at the young age of 15. His friends and colleagues included contemporaries like Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. In college, he became interested in composition and began studying under Charles Stanford, a prominent British composer whose compositional style would later influence Coleridge-Taylor, along with Brahms and Dvok. A number of Coleridge-Taylors works were published while he was still a student. His primary publisher was the Novello & Co. publishing company, where his editor and mentor was A.J. Jaeger. Jaeger, also a dear friend of Edward Elgar and later eternalized in the Nimrod movement of Elgar's Enigma Variations, made Elgar aware of the music and talent of Coleridge-Taylor. Prompted by a recommendation from Elgar, Coleridge-Taylor received his first commission, which was to compose a new piece for orchestra for the annual Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester, England. The commission resulted in Ballade in A Minor, Op. 33. Coleridge-Taylor was able to overcome racial prejudice to become enormously popular during his lifetime. He was undoubtedly the most prominent Black composer of his time. He made three successful tours to the United States during his career. The first took place in 1904 when a group of African American singers from Washington D.C. called the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society sponsored the tour. He performed and conducted his own choral works sung by the choral society, accompanied by the United States Marine band, and was received by President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. princetonsymphony.org/ 13/ princetonfestival.org"