Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast Op.30 No.1

“You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis”

“Then the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis”

“He was dress’d in shirt of doe-skin”’

“First he danc’d a solemn measure”

“Then said they to Chibiabos”

“Onaway! Awake, beloved!” (tenor solo)

“Thus the gentle Chibiabos”

“Very boastful was Iagoo”

“Such was Hiawatha’s wedding”

the above nine sections – eight choruses and a tenor solo – are in some cases followed by a short pause and in others by connecting material leading directly into the next section

At this point in musical history – a few months short of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death – it is difficult to believe that Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast was once as popular with British choral societies as Elijah, second only in that respect to Messiah. Its success after its sensational first performance in 1888 was such that Coleridge-Taylor was persuaded to write two more choral works on the same theme, The Death of Minnehaha in 1899 and Hiawatha’s Departure in 1900, together with a Song of Hiawatha Overture. Although the two sequel cantatas proved less popular than Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, they were prominent in the repertoire until the beginning of the Second World War. Indeed, between 1928 and 1939 all three of them were performed annually in a spectacular ballet version at the Royal Albert Hall with a huge chorus and as many as 200 dancers. The first ballet performance was conducted in 1924 by the composer’s son, Hiawatha Coleridge-Taylor (Hiawatha’s sister, Gwendolen, who changed her name not to Minnehaha but to Avril, was actually the more successful musician of the two).

Born Samuel Coleridge Taylor – the son of Alice Martin and Daniel Taylor, a doctor from Siera Leone working in London – he acquired the hyphen between Coleridge and Taylor by way of analogy with the poet Samuel Taylor-Coleridge and, apparently, a fortuitous printer’s error. Admirer though he was of the work of his near namesake, he was drawn irresistibly to the trochaic rhythms of the epic poem The Song of Hiawatha written in 1855 by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Like his hero Dvorak, he was clearly interested in the culture of the native Americans, an ethnic interest which later extended to a mission on behalf of the music of the black people of America and Africa. For the time being, however, he was famously and inextricably associated with Hiawatha, which was no doubt gratifying at the time but possibly a hindrance at a crucial point in his development. Certainly, before his untimely death from pneumonia in 1912, he failed to achieve the greatness promised by his early music: even before Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast Elgar had declared Coleridge-Taylor “far and away the cleverest fellow going among the younger men.”

Along with the bouncy trochaic rhythms (a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed) of Longfellow’s verse, another thing that attracted Coleridge-Taylor to The Song of Hiawatha was, as he confessed, its “funny names”. That much is clear from the relish with which, after an orchestral introduction, the chorus introduces the celebrated entertainers of the guests at the wedding feast – Pau-Puk-Keewis the dancer, Chibiabos the singer, Iagoo the story-teller. All three names are uttered on the rising fifth which opens the work on flute and trumpet and which is one of the principal motifs, along with primitive rhythms emphasised by drum strokes, used by the composer to set his exotic scene. The “gracious Hiawatha” and his bride the “lovely Laughing Water” (Minnehaha), are mentioned at at this stage but without the distinctive rising fifth: strangely, they are destined to be sidelined by both poet and composer at their own wedding.

The character who is given the most attention is Pau-Puk-Keewis, the central figure of the next three sections. Calling on him to dance for them, the chorus introduces him as “the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis”, applying the ritual rising fifth. After a change of metre from the hitherto prevailing 4/4 to a lilting 6/8 on woodwind and pizzicato strings, sopranos and altos open the description of his colourful appearance and his extravagant accoutrements. Then his “mystic dance” begins in 3/4 time, slowly at first, as recounted by basses and tenors, but then getting gradually quicker until the climactic point at which he creates a whirlwind. The orchestra prolongs the excitement before, at the urgent behest of trombones, the tempo broadens and Pau-Puk-Keewis grandly sits down.

A handsomely orchestrated recall of material from the opening of the work leads to the next section in which the chorus, accompanied by woodwind and harp but later without accompaniment, urge Chibiabos to sing for them. His contribution to the feast, gently introduced by oboe and muted strings, is the rapturous “Onaway! Awake, beloved” which was once so popular that every tenor had to have it in his repertoire. Resourcefully sustained by sensitively accomplished changes of harmony, it is certainly an exceptional lyrical inspiration.

The following choral section, “Thus the gentle Chibiabos”, is little more than a transition to the many-sided choral characterisation of the “old and ugly” Iagoo. As a bassoon entry indicates on a mention of “his immeasurable falsehoods” it is not without comedy and, as it progresses, not without brightly orchestrated joy in his legendary boastfulness and not without affection either. We do not get to hear his story, however, since the orchestra has already made a grandly fff reference back to the opening of the work, suggesting that the feast is near its end. This the closing chorus, “Such was Hiawatha’s wedding”, contentedly confirms and the orchestra makes a last recall of the opening bars with the rising fifths on flute and trumpet as before.