Western Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir present Tate, Balfour, Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák

Join the Western Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir for an exploration of one of the most impactful cultural touchstones in American history: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1855 epic poem, “The Song of Hiawatha.” An amalgamation of stories collected (with varying degrees of authenticity) from the Indigenous tribes of the Great Lakes region and the northern plains, “Hiawatha” is among the earliest works to center and humanize Native American subjects. The British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor devoted much of his career to the text, writing a concert overture and three large-scale cantatas setting sections of the poem. The first of these, “Hiawatha’s Wedding-Feast,” (1898) received thousands of performances in both Great Britain and the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century; for a time, it enjoyed an even greater popularity than Handel’s “Messiah.”

While the young Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was at work on his cantata, the elderly Czech master Antonín Dvořák was in the US on assignment to help develop a uniquely American school of classical music—just as he had done in Bohemia decades earlier. Dvořák had also been deeply affected by “Hiawatha,” having read the poem in a Czech translation. He even began work on his own musical setting of Longfellow’s epic, sketches of which were eventually incorporated into perhaps his most enduring and beloved work, the Ninth Symphony, nicknamed, “From the New World.” During his time in America, Dvořák also developed a close friendship with the young Black singer and composer Harry T. Burleigh, who would later become one of the most important figures in the transcription and preservation of African American spirituals. He was captivated by songs he learned from Burleigh, fragments of which also permeate the “New World” Symphony, leading Dvořák to conclude—presciently—that the entire future of American composition should rest upon the foundation of Black music.

Leading off the program are two works by prominent Indigenous composers: “Chokfi’” by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate and Andrew Balfour’s “Omaa Biindig.”

Image: Albert Bierstadt: Departure of Hiawatha (1868)