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Celebrating Legacy and Unity: The Enduring Influence of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast

Composition and Premiere of an essential attraction of the London summer season.”
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Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast It is important to note that while the work received
Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast and its companion works, international acclaim, Coleridge-Taylor did not receive
The Death of Minnehaha, Hiawatha’s Departure, and significant financial gain from the composition. The
“Overture to the Song of Hiawatha” make the com- young composer sold his rights to the work for fifteen
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plete Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wad- guineas—a modest fee for such a magnificent work.
sworth Longfellow, Op. 30. These works were composed He received no royalties for performances or copies
by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor between 1898 and 1900. purchased, and his financial outlook did not improve
Coleridge-Taylor gained recognition after a successful during that period as one would have thought. This
performance of his works at the 1898 Three Choirs led to a period of significant overworking, which is be-
Festival, around the time he was commissioned to com- lieved to have contributed to the pneumonia that led to
pose Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast. This opportunity came his death in 1912.
through the recommendation of Sir Edward Elgar,
who deeply admired his work. Coleridge-Taylor did
not take long to complete the score, and it was pub- The Literary Foundation:
lished ahead of its premiere on November 11, 1898, Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha
at his alma mater, The Royal College of Music. His Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha
mentor, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, conducted the served as the libretto for Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, pro-
premiere performance to an enthusiastic audience. In viding the narrative framework and poetic imagery
October 1912, Sir Hubert Parry later described the that Coleridge-Taylor masterfully set to music. Pub-
first performance, writing in the Musical Times: lished in 1855, Longfellow’s poem, written in a distinc-
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tive trochaic tetrameter, was heavily inspired by the
It had got abroad in some unaccountable and rhythms of Finnish epic poetry, particularly the Kalev-
mysterious manner that something of unusu- ala, a nineteenth-century epic compiled by Elias Lön-
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al interest was going to happen... Expectation nrot from Karelian and Finnish folklore. The section
was not disappointed, and Hiawatha started of the poem selected for Coleridge-Taylor’s cantata is
on a career [which] established it as one of the drawn from Canto XI, a passage that vividly recounts
the most universally beloved works of modern the joyous wedding of Hiawatha and Minnehaha in a
English music. rich, picturesque setting.
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The Song of Hiawatha is an epic poem inspired by In-
Within months of its premiere in London, it received digenous American legends, particularly those of the
its American premiere by the Temple Choir of Brook- Ojibwe people. It recounts the life and deeds of Hi-
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lyn, New York. It was then performed across the globe, awatha, a legendary hero known for his wisdom and
including performances in South Africa and New Zea- strength, and his union with Minnehaha, a maiden
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land. In England, performances became so frequent of the Dacotah people. Longfellow sought to capture
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that it is said to have rivaled the acclaim of Handel’s the grandeur and mysticism of Indigenous storytelling
Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In the decades fol- through a distinctly Western literary lens. Trochaic te-
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lowing its premiere, the complete Song of Hiawatha was trameter, with its rolling, chant-like rhythm, mirrors the
staged annually at Royal Albert Hall replete with stag- cadence of oral storytelling. The structure does not lend
ing and costume. The first staged performance was itself to musical adaptation. However, Coleridge-Tay-
conducted by Samuel’s son, Hiawatha Coleridge-Tay- lor used the text to create a fluid and dynamic setting.
lor, in 1924. The Museum of Music History’s website Longfellow divided the poem into multiple cantos,
includes photos from selected performances, noting: each depicting different aspects of Hiawatha’s life. Hi-
“For fourteen years between 1924 and 1939 this spec- awatha’s Wedding Feast vividly portrays the joy and gran-
tacular production of Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha was deur of the festivities through rich descriptions of na-

16 CHORAL JOURNAL June/July 2025 Volume 65 Number 9