is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which
features a comprehensive Works List and a
Bibliography by Dr. Dominique- René de Lerma,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Fairfax Singers
Poem set to music to be sung at event
Friday 24 April 2015
THE Fairfax Singers will be bringing the beautiful poetry of
Longfellow’s Hiawatha, set to the exciting music of Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor, to Christchurch at the Grove in Ilkley.
American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was fascinated by Native American
culture and studied it for many years before his epic poem The Song of
Hiawatha was published in 1855.
It combines myths and legends and tells of the childhood and training of this young man to be a great leader of his tribe.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an Anglo-African composer, born in London in 1875.
Of Creole descent, he achieved such success that he was once called
the African Mahler Having been greatly inspired by his reading of
Longfellow’s poem, he decided to set the words to music.
Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast is the first cantata of the trilogy, The Song
of Hiawatha, and consists of nine sections; eight for chorus and one,
Onaway! Awake, beloved! for solo tenor. The loving and respectful way
that Longfellow illustrates the great wedding feast and the vivid
description of the wedding guests and their festivities are moving in
their poetic beauty and romantic fancy and capture the imagination even
more set to the gripping music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
No comments:
Post a Comment