Samuel Coleridge-Taylor began his only symphony when he was a student of Charles Villiers Stanford, as his major project for the 1895–96 season.
A new edition by John L. Snyder of Coleridge-Taylor’s symphony in A minor, op. 8, includes the finale later added in 1900, as well as the two surviving discarded finales from 1896 and the revision of the slow movement issued in 1901 as Idyll, op. 44 (Middleton: A-R Editions, 2013).
The edition of the symphony is based on the autograph MSS, including autograph parts, now in the Royal College of Music Library and in the British Library. The extensive critical notes document the changes made by the composer, both in the score and in the process of copying parts. Coleridge-Taylor was concerned to make his symphony cyclic and struggled with how to accomplish that most effectively, as evidenced by the three finales.
The Idyll is edited on the basis of a copyist’s score formerly in the Novello rental library and now in the Fleisher Collection of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Above, Coleridge-Taylor around the time he wrote the symphony; below, a brief tribute to the composer, narrated by his daughter, Avril Coleridge-Taylor.
