Week 737: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” arr. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Beautiful Song Of The Week

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Like many spirituals with roots in the era of slavery in the United States, this song has two key emotions at its heart: a bones-deep melancholy and an unshakeable strength.

Because its pain is so accessible (what image could be more hopeless than a child without a mother?) this song has been performed by an unbelievably wide range of artists. Here’s a list of artists I bet you’ve never heard in the same sentence before: Paul Robeson, Elvis Presley, Van Morrison, Prince, Tom Jones, John Legend, Michael Kiwanuka…even Hootie and the frickin’ Blowfish recorded a version of this song.

But the most wonderful version I’ve found is this arrangement by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Coleridge-Taylor is a bit of an underappreciated star of British classical music. The child of an Englishwoman and a doctor from Sierra Leone, his musical precociousness got him a spot at the Royal College of Music where he studied composition under Charles Stanford. One of his many ambitions was to integrate elements of traditional African music into his compositions.

“Motherless Child” isn’t traditional African music of course, but as a cultural artifact, as a product of the African diaspora, something about the song must have captured Coleridge-Taylor’s imagination. Perhaps its combination of melancholy and strength resonated for him; he must have faced more than his share of intolerance as a man of mixed race trying to make his way in the world of classical music.

Despite his success as a composer, Coleridge-Taylor struggled for money. One of his pieces, “Song of Hiawatha,” was wildly successful, but because he’d sold the publishing rights as a way to make ends meet, its success brought him no royalties.

It’s often written that the financial pressure to continue churning out music led partly to his exhaustion, pneumonia, and eventual death aged only 37. However, the sadness of his untimely passing led directly to the creation of the Performing Rights Society, which works to ensure artists are fairly compensated for their work. Strength from melancholy.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. Isata Kanneh-Mason is the perfect person to perform this piece, as she has some connections to Coleridge-Taylor; both are British composers with hyphenated last names, and both have a parent who was a doctor from Sierra Leone.

2. In terms of dynamics, Kanneh-Mason covers every part of the spectrum, from a meek pianissimo to a determined fortissimo.

3. The arrangement uses a lot of suspended chords; where the fifth or the third doesn’t resolve when we want it to. This has the effect (to my ear at least) of making it feel like it’s reaching for something that’s just out of reach.

Recommended listening activity:

Realizing that your melancholy contains within it the seeds of strength.

Buy it here.

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