The Song of Hiawatha

The Song of Hiawatha is an epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow based on the legends of the Ojibway Indians. Longfellow credited as his source the work of pioneering ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, specifically Schoolcraft's Algic Researches and History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States.

Hiawatha in music

Antonín Dvořák was familiar with the work in Czech translation. In an article published in the New York Herald on December 15 1893, he stated that the second movement of his Symphony No. 9, From the New World, was a "sketch or study for a later work, either a cantata or opera ... which will be based upon Longfellow's Hiawatha" and that the third movement scherzo was "suggested by the scene at the feast in Hiawatha where the Indians dance."

Related Topics:
Antonín Dvořák - December 15 - 1893 - Symphony No. 9, ''From the New World,''

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Curiously enough, Dvořák claimed that "the music of the negroes and of the Indians was practically identical," and some passages that suggest African-American spirituals to modern ears may have been intended by Dvořák to evoke a Native American ambience.

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The poem was later used as the basis for a three-part cantata, Scenes from the Song of Hiawatha (1898—1900), by the English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

Related Topics:
1898 - 1900 - Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

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Part of the poem is recited in Mike Oldfield's album Incantations.

Related Topics:
Mike Oldfield - Incantations

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Laurie Anderson also includes an excerpt of the poem in her song of the same name.

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