Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in Holborn, England, on August 15, 1875. He was the son of Sierra Leonean doctor, Daniel Hughes Taylor, and English mother. Apparently feeling that his career as a surgeon was blocked because he was black, his father returned to Africa, abandoning Samuel and his mother in England. At the age of fifteen, Coleridge-Taylor entered the Royal College of Music to study the violin and he also studied composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. He was fortunate enough to receive a fellowship in composition in 1893.
His best known work, which was immensely popular during his lifetime, is the cantata "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast", a trilogy based upon poems by Longfellow. The ballet music from "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" was later arranged as an orchestral suite. He also wrote other works, such as the songs "African Romances", the "African Suite" for piano, and "Five Choral Ballads", a setting of poems on slavery by Longfellow, which include influences from native African music. The Petite Suite de concert (1910) was another of his famous piano arrangements.
In the United States Coleridge-Taylor's music and work inspired the establishment of the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society. This was a choral society in Washington, DC composed of some 200 African American singers for the purpose of performing Coleridge-Taylor's works. This society sponsored Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's first visit to the United States where he conducted them in a concert at Constitution Hall. He died in Croydon, in 1912.