Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in London on 15 August 1875. He grew up in Croydon, where he took violin lessons and was involved in the local church choir. At the age of 15, he entered the Royal College of Music, where he switched his main focus to composition. After his studies, Coleridge-Taylor earned money as a musician and teacher in order to sustain his composing, and achieved popular and critical acclaim with his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast in 1898. He was involved in cultural and political networks in London, and collaborated with African-American musicians, civil rights activists, and authors. Coleridge-Taylor published prolifically until his early death, from pneumonia, at the age of 37. For more information about Coleridge-Taylor’s life, work, and legacy, we recommend these two online exhibitions by the Black Cultural Archives and the Royal College of Music.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor © Debenham & Gould, c.1899. Public domain

As one of the most important British composers of the early 20th century, Coleridge-Taylor is represented well within the British Library’s music collections. While the single largest collection of his manuscripts can be found at the Royal College of Music, the British Library also holds a significant collection of autograph manuscripts alongside hundreds of printed scores and important early recordings of his music. On the occasion of Coleridge-Taylor's 150th anniversary, we wanted to join in the celebrations by providing an overview of our Coleridge-Taylor materials, together with brief information about how the material came to be at the Library, and why we are still making new Coleridge-Taylor discoveries within our wider archives of 20th century music.  

Overview of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor material at the British Library 

Published Sheet Music 

The British Library’s catalogue of printed sheet music lists almost 600 scores by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He didn’t write this many pieces: the figure includes 91 arrangements of Coleridge-Taylor’s music for other instrumental forces, around 20% of which are by the composer himself. It also includes appearances of individual pieces in compendiums for particular instruments or purposes – examples include a 1932 volume titled Music for the Home and the 2023 ABRSM Grade 8 violin syllabus – as well many reprints and later editions issued by publishers (to whom Coleridge-Taylor often handed over his copyright for low sums of money). In recent decades, there has been a gradual uptick in the number of new editions per year, including critical and scholarly editions, the creation of full performance sets for works previously tricky to perform owing to a lack of available materials, and more arrangements to make his music accessible to different instruments and ensembles. With six new Coleridge-Taylor editions added to the BL catalogue between 2021 and 2023 alone, the upwards trajectory looks set to continue as the composer’s popularity goes from strength to strength.

Pie chart showing the top publishers of Coleridge-Taylor’s music present in the British Library’s collection (click to view larger).

The pie chart above shows the top 12 publishers of Coleridge-Taylor scores (of 50 in total) in the Library’s collection, according to a basic export of catalogue data. The bar chart below shows the number of Coleridge-Taylor scores by year of publication (with disclaimers that the data itself is rough, and many records use approximate or inferred publication dates). The data indicates the enormous popularity and marketability of Coleridge-Taylor’s music in the 1890s, 1900s and 1910s. Following his death in 1912, the publications per year rapidly decreases – though publishers made the most of producing new editions and arrangements. The numbers decline markedly into the mid 20th century, until a resurgence of interest in Coleridge-Taylor’s music – thanks partly to the dedication of several key individuals and collectives – led to the steady upward trajectory present since the 1990s. Click here for a PDF showing the titles available at the British Library.

Bar chart showing indicative number of published scores per decade present in the British Library catalogue, based on a lightly-processed export of catalogue data (click to view larger).

Sound Recordings

A brief look at the catalogue data for sound recordings in the Library’s collections tells a similar story. Technologies for commercial recording (at first acoustic, then electric) only really took off towards the end of Coleridge-Taylor’s life, but at least a dozen recordings of his music were made before the end of the 1920s. The Library holds important early wax cylinder and phonograph recordings of songs, instrumental pieces, and short orchestral works, which continued being made until the Second World War. The enduring popularity of the Hiawatha cantatas led to notable recordings of this landmark work in the mid-century, including a 1961 version by Malcolm Sargent with the Royal Choral Society. (Sargent and the RCS were long associated with Hiawatha, having given annual staged performances at the Royal Albert Hall from the mid-1920s up until the war). More recently, many premiere recordings have been made of Coleridge-Taylor’s chamber, orchestral, choral, and vocal music.

Bar chart showing indicative number of recordings per decade present in the Sound and Moving Image catalogue, based on an export of catalogue data (click to view larger).

 Most of the fragile early published and unreleased recordings in the Sound & Vision collection have been digitised for preservation reasons. More recent recordings – on formats like open reel tape and cassette – pose their own preservation challenges, and many such collections were digitised as part of the Unlocking our Sound Heritage project (2017-2022). Highlights from the unpublished archival recordings digitised during the UOSH project include a 2-hour concert of Coleridge-Taylor’s music hosted by the Black Cultural Archive in 1985, and items from a concert given by Avril Coleridge-Taylor of music by father (along with her own compositions) in 1965. 

Items from the Sound Archive: 78 rpm discs and a wax cylinder.

Autograph Manuscripts

The Library holds autograph manuscripts for around 55 pieces of music by Coleridge-Taylor, across 36 shelfmarks. Click here to a view a list of these. Highlights include autograph full scores of the Hiawatha trilogy, lesser-known cantatas including A Tale of Old Japan, and the operas Thelma (which was revived thanks to the research of Catherine Carr) and Dream Lovers. The manuscripts also include full scores of orchestral works such as the Ballade in A minor, many songs and piano pieces, Coleridge-Taylor’s own arrangements of his music. The composer’s handwriting is beautiful and highly legible – it is clear from annotations and signs of use that many of the autograph scores, especially of larger works, had been used in performance. These autographs came to the Library via various means, some purchased from Coleridge-Taylor's descendants, others from the archives of his publishers. The Library is currently in the process of having its Coleridge-Taylor autograph manuscripts digitised, so they will be available to view online in the future. Beyond autographs, there are also some useful copy manuscripts – annotated engravers’ copies and publishers’ proofs – which shed light on the process of publication. 

Opening of Violin Sonata in D minor, violin part. MS Mus. 1813/1/2/95/5 (click to view larger).

 

Recent findings in the Boosey & Hawkes archive 

A number of Coleridge-Taylor autograph manuscripts in the Library’s collections have only come to light recently, as ongoing cataloguing of the large Boosey & Hawkes archive continues to uncover material relating to the publishing company’s history and the music of the composers it represented. Coleridge-Taylor was one of those composers, and among the manuscripts used in the preparation of printed editions are autograph scores of his violin sonata in D minor, op. 28 (which was edited for posthumous publication, in 1917, by Albert Sammons), and several songs. Of larger scale works, the archive also contains a manuscript score of the incidental music Coleridge-Taylor composed for an adaptation of Goethe’s Faust presented at His Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket in 1908. Perhaps most excitingly, a full score of Dream Lovers, the opera he composed with the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, has also come to light. This was published Boosey & Co. in 1898, but only issued as a vocal score. This manuscript shows us Coleridge-Taylor's intentions fully realised in orchestral form. 

First page of autograph full scores of Dream Lovers, op. 25. MS Mus. 1813/1/[PRO7s] (click to view larger).

The archive also holds various arrangements of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's music – one example transforms the ballet music from Hiawatha into a version to appear in the long-running Hawkes’s Military Band Journal. As mentioned before, arrangements provide clear evidence – if more were needed – of the popularity of Coleridge-Taylor's music. 

The administrative papers that also form part of the archive don’t contain any correspondence with Samuel himself, but there is quite a bit from members of his family. These offer a clear picture of their tireless efforts to promote his music and to ensure it remained known. Letters from Jessie Coleridge-Taylor repeatedly remind Leslie Boosey about the need to renew copyright in the USA. Letters between Leslie Boosey and Coleridge-Taylor's son, Hiawatha, from 1940 reveal plans to use Samuel’s music in an unnamed film, produced by the British National Films Company. Avril Coleridge-Taylor – Samuel’s daughter, herself a composer, conductor and pianist – is the best represented of the family within this archive. Her correspondence addresses aspects of her own music and makes clear her lifelong persistence in trying to encourage interest in and performances of her father’s music.

The letterhead of the Coleridge-Taylor Orchestra, which was conducted by Avril. The musical notation is from the opening of Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. From a letter from Avril Coleridge-Taylor to Leslie Boosey, 21 November 1935 (click to view larger).

Autograph manuscripts have recently come to light elsewhere, too: at the Royal College of Music, cataloguing work led to the discovery of a new song, which has since been recorded and digitised – more can be read about that here. 

Thanks to the work of researchers and performers over the past few decades – building upon the work of his family and earlier advocates – Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s name has gradually been reintroduced to contemporary audiences. Archives and libraries are key resources for this type of work, and we hope to facilitate much more research into Coleridge-Taylor’s music in the future. 

Some further online resources: 

Royal College of Music accessions list, which lists their Coleridge-Taylor manuscripts and archive holdings: https://archive.org/details/manuscript-accession-list/ 

Photographs and census documents at The National Archives: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/samuel-coleridge-taylor/ and https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/stories/photographs-samuel-coleridge-taylor/  

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation website https://sctf.org.uk/ with catalogue of works compiled by Dominique-Rene de Lerma: https://sctf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/coleridge-taylor-works.pdf  

Electronic copy of PhD thesis on Coleridge-Taylor’s music by Catherine Carr, Vol. 2 of which provides a source list (Vol 2): https://etheses.dur.ac.uk/2964/ 

Portrait of Theodorakis, 1971 © Heinrich Klaffs,        CC BY-SA 2.0

2025 marks 100 years since the birth of Mikis Theodorakis (1925–2021), arguably the most globally renowned Greek composer of the 20th century and, for many, the architect of modern Greek musical identity. While the bouzouki theme of Zorba’s Dance from the film Zorba the Greek (1964), alongside his other popular film scores, continues to dominate public memory, Theodorakis was far more than the composer of these iconic melodies. Over the course of his prolific career, he composed more than 1000 works, including operas, symphonic and chamber music, and politically charged song cycles. He also published numerous monographs on music theory and analysis, and on music’s relationship to its social, cultural, political and historical context. Anchored in a deeply patriotic political-cultural vision, Theodorakis's music gave voice to the collective struggle of the Greek people for freedom from oppression.

The British Library holds an array of material relating to Theodorakis: editions of his published scores including in various arrangements, recordings of his music, and a number of his monographs. This blog post spotlights a selection of these collection items to illustrate how Theodorakis’s published legacy offers crucial insights into his enduring cultural impact on both the musical and political life of the twentieth century, and the complex relationship between the two.

Early years: Political background and musical studies

Born on 29 July 1925, Theodorakis moved to Athens in 1943 and began studies at the Athens Conservatoire. During the Second World War and the Nazi Occupation of Greece (1941–1944), he became involved in the military wing of the largest and most popular resistance group, the Greek People’s Liberation Army or ELAS (Ellinikós Laïkós Apeleftherotikós Stratós).

The relief at the withdrawal of German occupying forces from mainland Greece in October 1944 was short-lived, as Athens descended into brutal internecine fighting. The clashes between leftist resistance organisations and right-wing groups became known as the December Events (Dekemvrianá). These escalated into a full-scale Civil War, which raged until 16 October 1949.

Due to his communist convictions and involvement in ELAS, Theodorakis was arrested and exiled to the prison islands of Psitalia and Ikaria, and later to Makronisos. There, a programme of forced anti-communist re-education was implemented under conditions of unscrupulous violence and terror and Theodorakis was brutally tortured. Owing to family connections, he was released from Makronisos in August 1949, after which he travelled to Crete.

During his recovery, Theodorakis began to write essays on Greek music. In these, he condemned the musical establishment and its entrenched divisions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. After completing his mandatory military service in 1950, he graduated from the Athens Conservatoire and began working as a journalist. He continued publishing critiques of the Greek musical landscape, especially its failure, in his view, to produce an ‘authentic’ national music.[i]

In 1954, he moved to Paris, where he studied musical analysis with Olivier Messiaen and conducting with Eugene Bigot.

Between two worlds: Studies in Paris

In Paris, Theodorakis encountered a musical climate characterised by high modernist, avant-garde aesthetics. He faced the challenge of navigating these prevailing musical trends while remaining faithful to his nationalist and Marxist ideals: to create art that was accessible, inclusive, and politically edifying for the people. Expressing this tension, he stated in 1960: ‘I am unable to follow strictly any of the aesthetic trends prevailing in the West, [within which] my Greek sensibility feels more than restricted: it feels betrayed.’[ii]

Sonatina No. 1 for Violin and Piano, Op.13 was composed in Paris in 1955 and could be seen as reflecting Theodorakis’s efforts to reconcile his vision of Greek musical identity within the French context. This score, published in Athens, is held at the British Library, shelfmark g.619.j.(7.)

Theodorakis returned to Greece in 1960, coinciding with the publication of a manifesto he co-authored entitled  A Draft Plan for the Reorganization of Greek Music. The text, published in the journal Kritiké (Criticism), declared that ‘Most sectors of [Greek] musical life are seriously ailing’, and called for reforms in music education, the creation of independent symphony orchestras, and a greater emphasis on the study of both Greek Church and popular music. [iii]

Music for the masses: Art-popular song 

Theodorakis’s vision for a politically conscious, national-popular aesthetic was beginning to take shape, but it was not emerging in the concert hall. In the 1950s and 1960s, he rose to prominence with the consolidation of a genre which became known as éntechno laïkó tragoúdi, or art-popular song. Assuming the role once occupied by representatives of the Greek National School of Music including Manolis Kalomiris (1883–1962), Theodorakis sought to redefine Greek music for a new era. Art-popular song aspired to bring high art to the masses by setting renowned Greek poetry to music that brought together elements of Western symphonic tradition, rebetiko (Greek urban blues), Greek folk song, and Byzantine musical idioms such as modes and plainsong.

Theodorakis’s musical setting of Odysseas Elytis’s epic poem Axion Esti is widely regarded as a landmark in Greek music. The oratorio remains one of the composer’s most influential works. This score was published in Athens in 1975 by Philippos Nakas, British Library shelfmark H.1053.g.

The agenda of art-popular song was fuelled by Theodorakis’s communist political beliefs and his relationship with the Soviet Union, qualities that set him apart from fellow composer Manos Hadjidakis (1925–1994), who also helped define the art-popular song genre but was not as politically engaged. Although Theodorakis maintained that there could be no fixed ‘communist principles in art’,[iv] his art-popular song was nonetheless ideologically grounded in in the social, cultural, and political principles of Socialist Realism. He was not just, as musicologist Jim Samson writes, ‘politically committed to the Marxist left; he had political ambitions and indeed a political career’,[v] and these politics were channelled into his art-popular songs, which ‘substituted for a possible socialist popular music’.[vi]

Solidarity and resistance: Theodorakis’s legacy

Widely regarded as a symbol of resistance and solidarity against fascism, Theodorakis went into hiding during the right-wing military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. Listening to and performing his music was banned, and he was once again arrested and eventually interned in a concentration camp. Following an international solidarity campaign calling for his release, he was able to return to Paris in 1970.

Journals of Resistance is Theodorakis’s account of his experiences under the Greek dictatorship of 1967 to 1974. It includes descriptions of his imprisonment, torture, and exile. First published in French, this English translation by Graham Webb was published in London in 1973. British Library shelfmark: W64/3977

Theodorakis made a triumphant return to Greece from his exile in Paris in 1974. He continued to compose and remained active in Greek political life, though some of his political activities, including a brief alliance with the centre-right New Democracy party, provoked controversy among his supporters.

Although his political career involved affiliations with various political parties, Theodorakis remained committed to the political ideals that shaped the genre of art-popular song. A few years before his death in 2021, he elucidated his stance in a political testament sent to the General Secretary of the Greek Communist Party or KKE (Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas):

Now, at the end of my life, at the time of reckoning, the particulars are erased from my mind and the “Big Picture” (ta Megála Megéthi) remains. This is how I recognise that my most crucial, powerful, and mature years were spent under the banner of KKE. For this reason, I want to leave this world as a communist.[vii]

This year, events are unfolding around the world to commemorate Theodorakis as a composer who challenged aesthetic boundaries and fought—through both music and politics—for a different world. He is remembered not only for his masterful and wide-ranging works, but also for the life of exile, resistance, and profound struggle that shaped them.

Dr Eirini (Irene) Diamantouli, Content Developer, Discovering Music

--- 

Notes

[i] Gail Holst-Warhaft, Theodorakis: Myth & Politics in Modern Greek Music (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1980), p. 24.

[ii] Mikis Theodorakis, Gia tin Ellinikí mousikí (On Greek Music) (Athens: Kastaniotis, 1986), pp. 124–5. Quoted in and trans. by Dimitris Papanikolaou, Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece (1945– 1975) (Oxford: Routledge, 2017), p. 80.

[iii] English translation by George Giannaris in Mikis Theodorakis: Music and Social Change (New York: Praeger, 1971), p. 294.

[iv] Mikis Theodorakis, ‘Otan synántisa ton Sostakóvits’ (When I Met Shostakovich), Interview with Vasíli K. Kalamára, n.d.

[v] Jim Samson, Music in the Balkans (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 521.

[vi] Ibid., p. 423.

[vii] ‘KKE Press office announcement: I epistolí tou Míki Theodoráki pros ton Dimítri Koutsoúmpa’ [The Letter of Mikis Theodorakis to Dimitris Koutsoubas], KKE.gr, (2021), available online.

Theodorakis' archive is held at the Lilian Voudouri Music Library in Athens. A summary of the contents is available here. 

Scenic view over Salzburg. Photo by Dominic Bridge.

A few weeks ago, Rupert Ridgewell (Lead Curator, Printed Music) and Dominic Bridge (Content Manager, Discovering Music) packed their umbrellas and headed off to the 2025 Congress of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML), in Salzburg, Austria. For one week, the birthplace of Mozart and the home of The Sound of Music became a bustling hub of music librarians from across the globe.

Dominic was there to share updates on the British Library’s Discovering Music project, which has entered a new and ambitious phase: a project team is currently commissioning articles and developing content for an online space focused on Classical and Romantic music. His presentation drew a keen audience interested in how the British Library will be bringing these collections to life online for school students, scholars, and the musically curious.

As the current President of IAML, Rupert gave several speeches, chaired working meetings, and helped launch a new study group for national libraries. Legal deposit was a hot topic at the group’s first meeting, with lively discussion about how different countries manage the collection and preservation of music in the digital age.

Though the weather seemed determined to test the limits of everyone’s waterproof jackets, the rain couldn’t dampen the spirits of attendees. Salzburg’s historic streets, mountain-fringed skyline, and the delicious Mozartkugeln provided the perfect setting to the week’s events. And of course, it wouldn’t be a IAML congress without music: delegates enjoyed an excellent programme of concerts, including an evening of new compositions for Piano and Electronics inspired by Mozart, a recital of sacred music by Michael Haydn and Johann Ernst Eberlin by the soloists, choir and orchestra of St Peter’s Abbey, a concert of songs by women composers of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as performances by traditional Austrian folk music groups.

A Mozartkugel, about to be eaten. Photo by Dominic Bridge.

Postcards from Salzburg, 1906

This post also provides a good opportunity to share a couple of intricately-designed commemorative postcards made for the celebrations in Salzburg of Mozart's 150th anniversary (1756-1906), which we came across recently during a cataloguing project. The decades immediately around 1900 are often referred to as 'the golden age of the postcard': the medium took off quickly after it was introduced around Europe in the 1870s, and reached its height of popularity in the years just before the First World War. Souvenir cards, often with specially-commissioned illustrations, were made to capture the attention of both the tourist industry and collectors, and there were several firms active in Austria and Germany with particular interests in producing postcards relating to culture and the arts.

Commemorative Mozart postcard, 1906

These postcards belonged to the music collector and expert Mozartian bibliophile Paul Hirsch, who was visiting Salzburg for the Mozart Festival organised by the Mozarteum. While Hirsch didn't include these pieces of Mozart ephemera as part of his extremely important collection of music and books about music, he did keep them as personal souvenirs of his visit. They were kept together with other pieces of festival memorabilia, information, and notes that helped him when, 40 years later, he wrote an article for the journal Music Review titled 'The Salzburg Mozart Festival, 1906. Reminiscences of an amateur'. They can be found in the Paul Hirsch Papers.

Commemorative Mozart postcards, 1906