[Above: This replica of the white marble bust of Longfellow in Poet's
Corner, Westminster Abbey, London, England, is found in the Brown
Research Library at Maine Historical Society, Portland, Maine. Still
image from the video by Richard Kane in "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and His
Music in America, 1900–1912."]
[Above: Rodrick Dixon, as seen in "Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and His
Music in America," sings a number of Coleridge-Taylor songs during The Longfellow Choral Festival, March 16 & 17, in Merrill Auditorium,
among them, Coleridge-Taylor's setting of Longfellow's poem, "The Arrow
and The Song," one of SCT's earliest student compositions. Rod's
reading will be from a Coleridge-Taylor manuscript previously thought
lost. Thanks to Jonathan Butcher, Artistic Director of Surrey Opera, for
finding this for us.]
The
whole poem is in praise of a certain lady, who "———— was
rich and gave up all/To break the iron bands/Of those who waited in
her hall/And labored in her lands." No doubt, it is
a very commendable and very comfortable thing, in the Professor, to
sit at ease in his library chair, and write verses instructing the
southerners how to give up their all with a good grace .
. ..—Edgar Allan Poe's criticism of "She Dwells by
Great Kenhawa's Side ["The Good Part that shall not be taken
away"], one of Longfellow's Poems on Slavery. From the
Aristidean, April 1845.
Dear
Mr. Hilyer,
.
. .Also, the second number of my choral ballads ["She Dwells by
Great Kenhawa's Side," from Longfellow's Poems on Slavery]
should be for solo quartet, if possible, you have three soloists
[Harry T. Burleigh, baritone, Estella Pickney Clough, soprano, and J.
Arthur Freeman, tenor], — is a good contralto to be had. .
.?—Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, letter to Andrew Hilyer, co-founder
of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society, Sept. 16, 1904
Born
today, February 27, 206 years ago, in a house (now vanished) not far
from today's Casco Bay Lines ferry terminal in Portland, Maine, Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow and his poetry have influenced events and the
lives of countless people around the world.
Some of you will
recognize that I've repeated a quotation from my July newsletter:
Edgar Allan Poe's criticism of Longfellow's poem on slavery, "The
Good Part that shall not be taken away," otherwise known as "She
Dwells by Great Kenhawa's Side," published in 1842.
There is a reason for
this. At 1 PM, Sunday, March 17, during our pre-Hiawatha-concert
recital of Coleridge-Taylor songs and choruses, you will get the
chance to hear Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's solo quartet version of the
poem that Edgar Allan Poe, a defender of slavery, ceremoniously
trashed.
Coleridge-Taylor composed
his musical version of "She Dwells by Great Kenhawa's Side"
for the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society of Washington, D. C.
The piece — as you can tell from Coleridge-Taylor's letter to
Andrew Hilyer, also quoted above — was too difficult for the large
chorus, and so the task of singing the premiere on November 16 and
17,1904, was given to three star soloists, among them, Harry T.
Burleigh, baritone, and an alto chosen from the choral society
membership.
That was not the only
aspect of the premiere that was distinctive: the orchestra
accompaniment to "She Dwells by Great Kenhawa's Side" was
played by the orchestra of the U. S. Marine Band under the baton of
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor — the last time a guest conductor would
lead "The President's Own" until 1998.
Kenhawa's Side has become
part of the mythology of Coleridge-Taylor — and a few people feel
very passionate about it — because the only known copies of the
orchestra score and parts, published by Breitkopf and Härtel, were
destroyed during the urban bombing of the Second World War.
Thus,
our four soloists, Angela
Brown,
soprano, Rodrick
Dixon, tenor, Karla
Scott,
mezzo-soprano and Robert
Honeysucker,
baritone, will perform the work with piano, and not orchestra, in
Merrill Auditorium on March 17.
But a few further words
need to be said about Longfellow and slavery. "She Dwells by
Great Kenhawa's Side" is a poem that anticipates the
Emancipation Proclamation by 21 years. It is a poem that may well
have been based on the life of Angelina
Grimké, one of those young wealthy southerners who "gave
up their all with good grace," as Poe writes. Those of you who
watched "The Abolitionists" on PBS's Great American
Experience will recognize Angelina Grimké as the young women who
rebels against her slave-owning family in the opening episode.
Hundreds of young people
may have been inspired to help educate the freed slaves after reading
Longfellow's "She Dwells by Great Kenhawa's Side" Prominent
among those was Charlotte
Forten Grimké, an educator and African-American
anti-slavery activist, who married Angelina's nephew. And the
young W. E. B. Du
Bois taught school in the rural south while studying
at Fisk University.
Of further interest is
Longfellow's poem, "The Building of the Ship," (1849), a
pro-Union, "ship as state" poem that was an inspiration
to Abraham Lincoln during
his presidency.
All
of this is to say that Longfellow's influence on American society was
enormous. During The
Longfellow Choral Festival in Merrill Auditorium, you will hear
five musical settings of Longfellow's poetry by Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor — one of those, Hiawatha, is four hours long, and
so I think that counts as a few extra.
