Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast: A Cantata for Tenor Solo, Chorus and Orchestra (1898)

Hiawatha is a man as other men, and wooed and won sweet Laughing Water, Minnehaha from the land of the Dacotahs. Hiawatha’s Wedding-Feast begins with the festivities at their marriage-gay are the guests as they offer presents and receive the generous hospitality of their host. Quip and jest pass around, and Chibiabos, the singer of sweet songs, sounds the keynote of passionate love in the ears of his entranced listeners. Dance follows song, and Pau-Puk-Keewis leaps and twines with the grace of a barbaric savage. Iagoo, the marvelous storyteller, amuses the guests with his tales of strange adventure. When the marriage feast is over, happy and joyous, the guests depart to their wigwams, and alone in the moonlight are Hiawatha and Minnehaha. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was an English composer. Coleridge-Taylor’s greatest success was perhaps his cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding-Feast. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an American poet who wrote many works that are still famous today, including The Song of Hiawatha, Paul Revere’s Ride and Evangeline.