Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), who rose rapidly to positions of authority in Britain’s musical world, and won the admiration of leading composers, the public, and the royal family. The hyphen in his surname was, apparently, a typographical error which Samuel liked and used thereafter.
Introduction
Daniel Taylor, a medical doctor who was later a coroner and magistrate in the Gambia, had a brief affair with an unmarried woman in London named Alice Martin. The result was a boy she named Samuel Coleridge Taylor, after the famous poet (it was Samuel who hyphenated it as Coleridge-Taylor).
AT the age of five, Samuel Taylor began violin lessons with a local music-teacher in Croydon. Fifteen years later, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he changed course to study composition, under Charles Villiers Stanford.
In 1905, Samuel was appointed to a Chair of Composition at Crystal Palace School of Art and Music, and was already in demand as a judge at prestigious music festivals. Stanford and Edward Elgar both fostered his career, and Sir Arthur Sullivan left his sickbed just to be present at the premiere of Samuel’s Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha.*
Samuel made three rapturously-received tours of the United States, and was granted a private audience at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt, but tragically succumbed to pneumonia in 1912, aged just thirty-seven.* Such was the regard in which he was held that King George V, hearing that Samuel’s struggling widow was being denied royalties on ‘Hiawatha’, awarded her an annual pension of £100.*
With grateful thanks to the website ‘The Black Mahler’ by Charles Elford.
Berwick Sayers recorded Sullivan’s promise, made to Coleridge-Taylor when the two bumped into each other at his publisher’s (Sullivan had gone there to purchase a copy of ‘Hiawatha’). “I’m always an ill man now, my boy,” said he, “but I will come to this concert, even if I have to be carried into the room.” The respect was mutual: Coleridge-Taylor regarded Sullivan’s ‘Golden Legend’ very highly, as he did the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas.
See a touching account by family friend Berwick Sayers in our post Deep River.
Roughly equivalent to £8,800 in terms of purchasing power today.
Précis
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (named after the famous poet) was a late-Victorian and early-Edwardian composer, much admired by Elgar, Stanford, and Sullivan. Though he died at the tragically early age of thirty-seven, he had already achieved extraordinary success at home and also in America, as a composer in his own right, and as an academic authority. (54 / 60 words)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (named after the famous poet) was a late-Victorian and early-Edwardian composer, much admired by Elgar, Stanford, and Sullivan. Though he died at the tragically early age of thirty-seven, he had already achieved extraordinary success at home and also in America, as a composer in his own right, and as an academic authority.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, because, despite, if, must, ought, until, whether.
Archive
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
This exercise uses words found in the accompanying passage.
1 Age. Sickbed. Succumb.
2 Hold. Private. Seven.
3 Appoint. Rapturous. Three.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Add Vowels Find in Think and Speak
Make words by adding vowels to each group of consonants below. You may add as many vowels as you like before, between or after the consonants, but you may not add any consonants or change the order of those you have been given. See if you can beat our target of common words.
lgs (7+3)
eulogies. lags. leagues. legs. logos. logs. lugs.
elegies. eulogise. luges.
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