Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha

The Hiawatha trilogy of cantatas (1898--1900), based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha, were some of the most popular and widely performed pieces of music in the opening decade of the twentieth century. As a result, their young African British composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875--1912), became widely celebrated in the UK and North America.

In this volume, Benedict Taylor examines the musical and political significance of Coleridge-Taylor through the reception history of his Hiawatha trilogy. Coleridge-Taylor’s music and efforts on behalf of the African diaspora were made largely from within the white frame in which he grew up and highlight the difficulties of transcultural or interracial mediation at this point in history. Longfellow’s source text already constitutes a contested narrative of ethnic identity and appropriation through its epic framing of Native American history from a white, settler perspective. And further complicating the story, the success of Hiawatha made Coleridge-Taylor a focal point for African American attempts at cultural recognition.

Not only does Hiawatha afford the chance to explore the music of one of the most important composers of colour in the Western classical music tradition, but the work and its reception forms a prism with which to analyse questions of canonicity, marginalization, race, and identity from the composer’s own day to the present.

Benedict Taylor is Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the long nineteenth century, British music, and philosophy.