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".... one hundred years of singing"
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Coleridge-Taylor: HIAWATHA'S WEDDING FEAST |
with a supporting programme of ENGLISH FOLK-SONGS |
First appearing at the age of eight, playing the violin at a suburban concert,
Coleridge-Taylor had an English mother and a West African father, who practised
in London as a doctor but, unsuccessful, returned to Sierra Leone without his
wife and child. A benefactor sent him to the Royal College of Music, where,
very poor and "with a large circular patch on his trousers", he
studied under Stanford. Recognition first came with a commission to write an
orchestral work for the Three Choirs festival in Gloucester in 1898. as a result of a recommendation from Edward Elgar. This was his Ballade in A
minor. He had already started to write Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, and it was performed in the same year establishing his reputation. He very soon
decided to turn the work into a trilogy, and added The Death of Minnehaha
and Hiawatha's Departure. He later wrote an oratorio The Atonement,
a cantata A Tale of Old Japan, other works for orchestra, chamber music,
and incidental music for plays. Although he died before reaching full maturity,
he provided a new and welcome style for choral societies. The Wedding Feast was
at one time the third most popular choral work after Messiah and
Elijah, and a programme from 1939 has photographs showing the arena of the
Royal Albert Hall filled with Red Indians (in reality, members of the Royal
Choral Society and dancers).
Hiawatha was a real person, a Mohawk Indian of about AD 1570. He founded the
Iroquois League, substituting a tribunal of justice to settle disputes, instead
of war. Longfellow drew his material mainly from the work of Henry Rowe
Schoolcraft, a pioneer of American Indian ethno-logy. His poem is believed to
be historically correct, with the location identified as by the shores of on Lake Superior