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COPYRIGHT 2001 Center For Black Music Research
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, it was evident that musical tastes were leaving the neoclassical realm that had been inhabited by the serialists, anti-Wagnerians, acoustic technicians, and others. A nostalgia for tonality haunted George Crumb's Macrokosmos, Tchaikovsky was back in favor, the later works of Richard Strauss were securing frequent performances and staging. Being a neoromanticist was no longer an anathema. This development accounts for changes in taste that are particularly evident in the case of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and are reflected in the appearance of publications about and recordings of his music.
The chronological survey of the literature in the article on Coleridge-Taylor that appears in the International Dictionary of Black Composers(1999) includes six sources that appeared before 1922, four released within the next forty-four years, and fifteen that were published between 1977 and 1995.
The first release of a recording of Coleridge-Taylor's compositions came before 1920, when Maud Powell excerpted and arranged "Deep River" from Twenty-four Negro Melodies. About 1923, pianist Alec Rowley offered the "Petite suite de concert" from Scenes from an Imaginary Ballet. Ten 78 rpm recordings appeared in the 1930s, involving such champions as conductors Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Dan Godfey, tenor Tudor Davies, and baritones Peter Dawson and Arthur Reckless. In the 1940s, only three works were recorded, two of which were by soprano Dorothy Maynor.
While the war certainly had something to do with this reduction in the number of recordings, the attraction of neo-classicism is evidenced as well. In fact, there were no works of the composer recorded in the 1950s. The next decade, however, included the first complete recording of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, which performance seems never to have left the catalog, although appearing on a variety of labels (see Discography). And there were two recordings of the Petite suite de concert, exemplary of light music from Coleridge-Taylor's last year.
Things then began to change in the 1970s, with twenty-one recordings or notable performances. In 1971, we heard the first...
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