Albany
2007
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: 24 Negro Melodies, Op. 59
About This Album
African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who died at the age of 37 in 1912, was known during his lifetime mostly for big choral pieces that were favorites on both sides of the Atlantic (African-Americans called him the "black Mahler"), but are of a type not so beloved these days. Recent years have seen a rediscovery of his smaller works, many of which are fascinating. Witness this absolutely groundbreaking set of 24 "Negro Melodies," partly the product of Coleridge-Taylor's encounters with the works of African-American writers W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. The set is divided into sections covering "Southeast Africa," "South Africa," "West Africa," the "West Indies," and finally "America," which takes up the last part of the first disc and all of the second. The African melodies are not drawn on Coleridge-Taylor's own Sierra Leonean background but are taken mostly from early ethnomusicological collections. Nevertheless, the whole idea of the album was startling enough for 1905, when the work was published. Coleridge-Taylor sets out, more or less, to fulfill Dvorák's project of making European-style concert music out of the raw material of the African-American spiritual, but he ends up going beyond that -- he was working from a distorted version of what African music was about, but even as he surrounds his African and African-American tunes with late Romantic harmonies and Brahmsian thematic elaborations he is making tentative steps toward piecing them together. Hear the "Bamboula," track 8 of CD 1, which is quite different in its effect from Louis Moreau Gottschalk's flashy exegesis of the same rhythm; Coleridge-Taylor is more interested in making it part of a continuum running from Africa through the Caribbean to North America, and he draws rhythmic connections with other pieces in the set. If pianist David Shaffer-Gottschalk is related to the earlier Gottschalk there's no mention of it here, but he is a technically well-equipped and sympathetic interpreter of Coleridge-Taylor's music, sensitive to the innovative thinking that was poking out from under the blanket of Edwardian-era technique. A fine release from Albany that showcases the label's commitment to unusual repertory. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide
Track List

Disc 1

Negro Melodies (24) For Piano, Op. 59/1
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Disc 2

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