The reputation of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, son of an English mother and a father who was a doctor from Sierra Leone, has suffered in recent years; but at one time his music enjoyed considerable popularity in England, while as a conductor visiting New York he was hailed by one critic as ‘the black Mahler’.

Choral Music

Coleridge-Taylor’s best-known composition is the cantata Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, later extended as Scenes from ‘The Song of Hiawatha’, based on the poem by Longfellow.

Orchestral Music

The ballet music from Hiawatha was later arranged as an orchestral suite. The Petite Suite de concert of 1910 has retained a measure of popularity also in a piano arrangement.