The night of 30 November 1936 began like any other inside the Crystal Palace. Aside from the two night watchmen, the only other people in the building were the Crystal Palace Orchestra who were in the concert room rehearsing A Tale of Old Japanby Samuel Coleridge- Taylor who had died 24-years earlier. Samuel blazed dramatically onto the music scene just 12-years before his death, but the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor lived on. Crystal Palace audiences first heard the work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in 1898. Having left the Royal College of Music the year before he immediately achieved staggering success aged just 23 when he was invited to write music for the Three Choirs Festivalin Gloucester. He composed the Ballade in A Minorfor Orchestra, which was performed in Gloucester on the 12th September and was rapturously received. Following this success, he was invited by August Manns to perform the Ballade at the Crystal Palace on the 4th November.

This second performance was as successful as the first. Thereafter, August Manns performed many of Coleridge- Taylor's works during the Saturday concerts. Another success followed when his masterwork Haiwatha was performed at the Royal College of Music. This was to become his most popular composition and he was soon in considerable demand with work descending on him in a torrent. Apart from commissions for music, he was asked to conduct or adjudicate at concerts and he was asked to teach.

From 1900 he accepted several teaching appointments in and around Croydon and in 1903 he became Professor of Composition at Trinity College of Music. In February 1905, Miss Ellen Prosser, principal of the Crystal Palace School of Music, invited him to take up a teaching post as Professor of Theory and Harmony. He was to receive 40 guineas per 12 lessons making him more highly paid than many of the tutorial staff at the Palace. He was particularly attracted by the vantage point in the building which gave unparalleled views over the surrounding countryside. He could

never enter the classroom without going to the window and waxing lyrical over the view. His classes generally consisted of young ladies and as a rule he taught exceptional students who were making good progress. Miss Prosser exclaimed: "I never knew him to refuse to do anything that I asked him to do." He became a very popular teacher, and was idolised by his students who he treated with the utmost kindness and patience. On arriving at the school, he would remark that he had to leave in time to catch his train but became so absorbed in his work that he had to be continually reminded to leave on time. Miss Prosser remarked: "I never knew a man who was so careless of the value of time or of money, not indeed, that he wasted either, but that in giving his lessons, for example, he would often linger over them far longer than he ought to have done." By now, he was now very busy, with his music and his conducting, his teaching posts and his private lessons. Director of Music, Walter Hedgecock, once recalled that he took a keen interest in the Crystal Palace concerts and, when his own compositions were performed, he came to the performances and always wrote a letter of thanks to the choir and orchestra. However, it was only a matter of time before his unremitting workload took its toll. On 28 August 1912, Coleridge-Taylor walked to West Croydon Station. He was going to the Crystal Palace to visit the recently opened Chinese Exhibition. As his train pulled in, he collapsed on the platform. He picked himself up and returned home in considerable distress. A doctor was summoned and pneumonia was diagnosed and intensely aggravated by his tremendous workload. He died four days later aged just 37. He was buried at Bandon Hill cemetery, his funeral was attended by Walter Hedgecock while the principal and staff of the Crystal Palace School of Music sent a wreath.