Bob Draper <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>However, there is a definately true story that a black slave living
>in Cornwall, England in the late 18th century wrote excellent music. ...

Don't know this composer; but there were a number of successful African or
Carribean-African composers based in Europe (particularly in revolutionary
France, where cultural exotica was especially prized...  this country also
provided a happy musical hunting ground for the Creole-American composer,
Louis Moreau Gottschalk) in the 19th century: the best known - Samuel
Coleridge Taylor - spanned the century's divide, composing his best known
work - the three choral blockbusters _Hiawatha's Wedding Feast_, _The Death
of Minnehaha_ & _Hiawatha's Departure_ from Longfellow's _The Song of
Hiawatha_ - literally around the turn of the century.  Culturally, nothing
was straightforward in Europe at the time (when Elgar - a Catholic - & SCT
- an African of illegitimate birth - coexisted in England, its probable
that Elgar's culture was the more despised by the mainstream population);
so there's no a priori reason why even an Austrian figure like Beethoven
couldn't'ave had some black ancestry; but absolutely no evidence to support
the case, either.

By the way: SCT was (probably not surprsingly) an epic figure in
African-American culture at the time (who even achieved the honor of
a US-American Presidential audience...  something which had previously
only been granted to Richard Strauss (& not Elgar) & for a while: one
of the bestknown figures in British music; but his non-Hiawatha music has
struggled to retain a footing...  still: as late as 1997, a postal worker
- who happened to be a parttime chorus singer - queried the name on an
order (for SCT's fine _Twenty Four Negro Melodies_ collection) i was
trying to post....

All the best,

Robert Clements <[log in to unmask]>