Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Remembered today as the composer of the once enormously popular cantata Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, the career and music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor are -- more, even, than Elgar's -- emblematic of the Edwardian era in its opulence and its squalor. The son of a Krio doctor from Sierra Leone and an Englishwoman, he rose above the constrictions of class and race to become one of the most acclaimed composers of his time. Coleridge-Taylor was born on August 15, 1875, in the Holborn district of London. Musically precocious, his talent was recognized early and supported by a series o...