Friday, April 24, 2015

Ilkley Gazette: Fairfax Singers in 'Hiawatha's Wedding Feast' of Afro-British Composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Christchurch at the Grove, Ilkley, 7 PM Sat. 5/9/15


is profiled at AfriClassical.comwhich
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. 

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