Samuel Coleridge Taylor (And yes it is the right way round)

[Nearly Sane]

But indeed someone I was unaware of till today.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Coleridge-Taylor


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqaSqwHlsw

[Rhiannon]

Interesting, and a little sad.

My first job was with the PRS.

[Nearly Sane]

Interesting, and a little sad.

My first job was with the PRS.

Yes, it is sad. Weirdly I found out about him because so read a tweet from Floella Benjamin (who I don't follow) about the fact that she has been trying to get someone to make a film about him for ages, and has just had another rejection.

[Harrowby Hall]

But indeed someone I was unaware of till today.

Between the Wars, his Hiawatha was very popular - not surprising given that it was championed by Malcolm Sargent.

And Elgar thought highly of him as well.

[Nearly Sane]

Between the Wars, his Hiawatha was very popular - not surprising given that it was championed by Malcolm Sargent.

And Elgar thought highly of him as well.

And yet I had managed to get a chunky percentage through my three score and ten with no clue to his existence, and I doubt I'm alone

[Rhiannon]

And yet I had managed to get a chunky percentage through my three score and ten with no clue to his existence, and I doubt I'm alone

That feels like a fashion thing. His work fell out of fashion?

[Nearly Sane]

That feels like a fashion thing. His work fell out of fashion?

Assume so. Listening to his stuff, I can't see anything that might explain that but then I suppose fashion is inexplicable.

[Dicky Underpants]

Between the Wars, his Hiawatha was very popular - not surprising given that it was championed by Malcolm Sargent.

And Elgar thought highly of him as well.

Indeed, and I think it was down to Elgar that his career gained a much needed boost. Can't think of that many black classical composers over the centuries, apart from the French creole violin virtuoso and composer Chevalier Saint-Georges.

[Dicky Underpants]

Assume so. Listening to his stuff, I can't see anything that might explain that but then I suppose fashion is inexplicable.

The tenor aria from Hiawatha "Onaway, awake beloved" has always been popular with those classically trained, high-voiced males. Rightly so - it's a lovely thing. The whole work is worth more than a bit of curiosity value. More so than the Longfellow poem on which it is based, I'd say.

[Harrowby Hall]

I believe that Sargent's interwar performances of Hiawatha were given in a semi-staged format (rather like John Wilson's Broadway musicals at the Proms). This would probably make them more generally accessible than would conventional concert performances.

Incidentally, Longfellow is commemorated, with a bust, in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. This seems rather strange since he was not British.  (Yes, T S Eliot is also in Poet's Corner - but he did become a British citizen and, indeed, very English.)