The Song of Hiawatha (Coleridge-Taylor) The Song of Hiawatha (Coleridge-Taylor) The Song of Hiawatha (full name: Scenes from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Op. 30, is a trilogy of cantatas written by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor between 1898 and 1900. The first part, Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, was particularly famous for many years and made the composer's name known throughout the world. "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" consists of nine sections: eight for chorus and orchestra, and one, "Onaway! Awake, beloved!", for solo tenor and orchestra. In 1898, Coleridge-Taylor was fresh from his success with his orchestral "Ballade in A minor", which was performed at the Three
The Song of Hiawatha the Indians dance". African-American melodies also appeared in the symphony, thanks to his student Harry Burleigh, who used to sing him songs from the plantations which Dvořák noted down. The fact that Burleigh’s grandmother was part Indian has been suggested to explain why Dvořák came to equate or confuse Indian with African American music in his pronouncements to the press. Among later orchestral treatments of the Hiawatha theme by American composers there was Louis Coerne's 4-part symphonic suite, each section of which was prefaced by a quotation from the poem. This had a Munich premiere in 1893 and a Boston