Isaac Nathan

Template:Short description Template:DMCA Template:DMCA Isaac Nathan (1792 – 15 January 1864) was a Jewish, English composer, musicologist, journalist and self-publicist, who has been called the "father of Australian music", having assisted the careers of numerous colonial musicians during his twenty-year residence in Australia. He is best known for the success of his Hebrew Melodies (1815–1840) in London. However, he made significant contributions as a singing teacher and music historian and as a composer of opera in the Royal Theatres (1823–1833). After emigrating to Australia in 1840, Nathan wrote Australia's first operas and Australia's first contemporary song cycle which entangled fragments of Aboriginal songlines with European musical traditions. Nathan tailored compositions to the unique individual singing needs of his students and community choirs while using the Neapolitan bel canto pedagogical tradition that he inherited in London. Nathan's students include Dame Marie Carandini.

Early success

Nathan was born to Menahem Mona, a chazan of the Jewish community at Canterbury, and his wife Mary. Their marriage split up around 1800 and Mary subsequently married a Mr. Lewis. Nathan was initially destined for his father's career and went to the Jewish night school of Solomon Lyon in Cambridge. As a young child, Nathan played violin, piano and organ. Showing an enthusiasm for music, he was apprenticed to the London Italian master singing teacher Domenico Corri. Corri transmitted the Neapolitan bel canto tradition of Nicola Porpora to a younger generation of musicians including Nathan. In 1813 Nathan conceived the idea of publishing settings of tunes from synagogue usage and persuaded Lord Byron to provide the words for these. The result was the poet's famous Hebrew Melodies. Nathan's setting of these remained in print for most of the century and new editions were published throughout his life, the last of which were printed in 1861.

Nathan took over the teaching of Domenico Corri's vocal pupils by 1812, and among his pupils he counted Eliza Worthing (the daughter of the Mayor of Dublin - and later his first wife, Eliza Nathan), and the Princess Charlotte of Wales. It was Charlotte who encouraged and provided Patronage for the Hebrew Melodies before any others became involved.

The Hebrew Melodies used, for the most part, melodies from the synagogue service. Nathan's claim that they were original ancient melodies was criticised at the time though it is hard to prove if they were or were not handed down from the ancient service of the Temple in Jerusalem. Many were Sephardi or oriental Mizrahi melodies as well as some Ashkenazi melodies and were intended to align with the reform and uniting of the Synagogue. This position caused criticism of his "authenticity" as Nathan diverged from orthodox traditional ideologies towards progressive reform ideas and modern agenda of hybridity - walking in two worlds. Some of the melodies had become absorbed through hybridity into the synagogue service over the centuries with new texts; aligning with the secularised Yeshiva emancipation principles taught by Solomon Lyon and the Prague Haskalah ideals under which Nathan was educated at the Jewish Night school in Cambridge (1805-1806) and Naval Academy in Chelsea (1807-1808). Nathan's Hebrew Melodies project with Byron brought the traditional melodies sung by his father in the Canterbury synagogue and other Cantors in London, to the popular stage. Nathan's first patron was Princess Charlotte of Wales, and it was through her patronage that the famous Jewish singer John Braham subscribed to the compositions, requesting two copies. Nathan invited Braham to be a collaborator and to sing the works, and offered to place his name on the title page and a share of profits. Braham took no part in the creation of the Melodies and was not involved in later editions of the cycle.

The success of the Melodies gave Nathan some fame and notoriety. Nathan became a singing teacher of a the Princess Royal, Princess Charlotte. Royal Archives documentation verifies that Nathan's music remains in the Music Album of Princess Sophia August, and that he helped catalogue the Carlton House library and was permitted by the King's Librarian Charles M. Sumner, to use the resources in the library and dedicate his Essay on the History and Theory of Music (1823) to the Prince Regent, later George IV.. Nathan was then engaged to contribute to no less than five operatic works in the King's Theatres in London between 1823-1833. The last of which, "The King's Fool" based upon the blacklisted plot "Le Roi S'Amuser" of Victor Hugo was one of the most popular works adapted for the London stage in 1833.

Provincial Life, Authoring Books and Raising a Family

Nathan married Eliza Worthington, daughter of Lord Mayor of Dublin William Worthington in 1812. Eliza converted to Judaism and took the name Sarah. The young couple had 6 children together and dreamed of emancipation for the Jews, and embodied interfaith love, and scholarly approach to enlightened post-Napoleon aspirations for society. Both published significantly. Eliza's first novel Elvington was published in 3 volumes in 1812 and she is the first Jewish female author to write and publish a work of such significance. During their time in Bristol, she produced a second iteration in 1819, and advertised Nathan's singing prospectus. Over the next few years the young couple raised their children in Bristol, wrote books, attended intellectual soirées with the Hunt Circle and Lyric Society and Nathan performed and taught several of his star pupils in this era. Eliza wrote another book called Langwreath which she published in 1822. Nathan published his encyclopaedic Treatise with patronage and dedication to King George IV and corresponded directly with Charles M. Sumner, the King's Librarian at Carlton House. The collection was catalogued in the same year, and Nathan appears to have gained privileged access, remarkable for a Jew in 1823. Nathan's publication of An Essay on the History and Theory of Music led to an appointment as a composer in the King's Theatre and he contributed to five operas between 1823 and 1833.

Eliza died because of complications in childbirth in January 1824 after a performance of one of his operas. The entire cast was present and Nathan processed his grief with Caroline Lamb who also mourned the death of Byron in the same year. He continued working and was criticised for his comic opera which didn't have the same character that he achieved in earlier works.

Nathan felt a special attachment for Lady Caroline; she was godmother to one of his children and he wrote her an appreciative poem in Hebrew, which he reprints in his Recollections of Lord Byron.

His copyright for Hebrew Melodies ought to have brought him income – at one point he sold it to his married sister, presumably to avoid it being lost in bankruptcy. He attempted a publishing business in partnership with his brother Barnett Nathan, who later became proprietor of Rosherville Gardens.

In 1826 he married Henrietta Buckley, a dancer, and they had a further 6 children together, 3 in England and 3 more in Australia later in life. Both spouses were Christian; however for both, Nathan also undertook and arranged synagogue marriages.

London return

In 1823, Nathan's father died, and he returned to London possibly with the aid of an inheritance. Nathan published a history of music (1823), dedicated by permission to King George IV, which shows in its treatment of Jewish music a great deal of understanding of the Bible and of Jewish traditions. The Essay on the History and Theory of Music contains within it 90 pages of exercises in the Neapolitan bel canto tradition which Nathan documented. This work was possibly formed part of an application for the role of professor of singing at the newly formed Royal Academy of Music. Nathan's treatise was later copied extensively by others including Domenic Crivelli (who was appointed professor of singing in 1824, and given access to Nathan's treatise), and Manuel García II, who was sent a copy in 1836. Nathan was not successful in his aspiration to be the professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music. Nathan wrote no less than five operas between 1823 and 1833, and many of his songs became extremely popular. He also wrote frequently for the popular press in London on boxing and music.

Nathan was a well-established singing teacher in the 1830s and by 1836 his Musurgia vocalis, the second edition of his "Essay on the History and Theory of Music" established him as a world leading authority on the bel canto tradition. One of his pupils was the English poet, the very young Robert Browning, who 60 years later recalled: "As for singing, the best master of four I have, more or less, practised with was Nathan, Author of the Hebrew Melodies; he retained certain traditional Jewish methods of developing the voice".

Official Secret Service for the Royal Family

From 1837 to 1839, Nathan was engaged by King William IV to protect the British royal family. He discovered a plot and purchased 500 copies of a book from publishers across London. The book was written by Sophia Woodward and together with a birth certificate identified Lady Edwardina Flinn (née Kent) as the second daughter of King George IV and Queen Caroline during wedlock. Reverend William Groves baptised the Royal baby and later certified she was the legitimate heir to the throne by birthright. When Nathan sought to claim expenses for his actions, the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne intervened and his allowed a personal vendetta to effect his official role. Melbourne refused to honor the Seal of King William IV Nathan was left in financial ruin. He sold everything he had and gathered his family and moved to Australia.

Australian resurgence

Nathan emigrated to Australia with his children, arriving in April 1841. There he became a leader of local musical life, acting as music adviser both to the synagogue and to the Roman Catholic cathedral in Sydney. He gave first or early performances in Australia of many of the works of Mozart and Beethoven. He was the first to research and transcribe Australian Aboriginal music; he also set lyrics by the poet Eliza Hamilton Dunlop.

Nathan wrote Australia's first operas, Merry Freaks in Troublous Times (1843) and Don John of Austria (1847), and Australia's first song cycle, The Australian Melodies. He made significant contributions as a singing teacher, and as one of the country's earliest music journalists. Nathan published prolifically with announcements, advertisements, analysis, context, lyrics and reviews. On 3 May 1847, Don John of Austria became his first opera to be copyesitproduced in Australia, at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney.

Peter Sculthorpe wrote an orchestral piece in 1988 called At the Grave of Isaac Nathan.

The portrait of Nathan shown in this article is held by the National Library of Australia.

Death and descendants

On 15 January 1864 Nathan was crushed by a tram car in Sydney at the intersection of Pitt Street, where he lived at No. 442, and Goulburn Street after alighting from the tram. The horse-drawn tram was the first in Sydney: Nathan was Australia's (indeed the southern hemisphere's) first tram fatality. He was buried in Sydney; his tomb is at Camperdown Cemetery.

Many of Nathan's descendants became leading Australian citizens. Later descendants include four brothers – the conductor Charles Mackerras; the psephologist Malcolm Mackerras; the headmaster of Sydney Grammar School Alastair Mackerras; the sinologist Colin Mackerras, and their nephew, the conductor Alexander Briger.

Date of birth

Isaac Nathan was most likely born in 1792 in the English city of Canterbury to a chazzan (Jewish cantor) born in Poland, Menahem Monash "Polack" (the Pole), and his English Jewish wife, Mary (Lewis) Goldsmid (1779–1842). His date of birth was erroneously recorded as 1790 on his tombstone in Camperdown Cemetery, which is at St Stephen's Church. This has misled scholars, perhaps most notably his own descendant Catherine Mackerras, who recorded his year of birth as 1790. However, Graham Pont discovered that Isaac Nathan wrote at least three autobiographical entries in newspapers and dictionaries identifying that he was born in 1792. Some records in the UK indicate that he was 44 years old in October 1835, suggesting that he might have been born in late 1791. Nathan was born at Canterbury Synagogue before their records began being kept officially in 1800.

Summary

Nathan's Hebrew Melodies were in print in England at least until the 1850s and were known widely across Europe. They were particularly prominent among Jewish circles, probably because they resonate with Jewish enlightenment (Haskalah) sentiments. Nathan continued recomposing these songs and others with the last formal publications occurring in Sydney in 1861.

Much scholarly debate has occurred with regard to Nathan's role as the creative instigator for Byron's poems. However, detailed diary accounts show that Nathan and Byron had a very intimate and enduring professional and personal collaboration over a sustained period of time. For some songs, Nathan played music at the piano, and Byron was struck with a flash of inspiration to write the prose. Most likely, Nathan gave Byron the theological context derived from Talmudic oral traditions, then sang melodies for Byron. Much of the work was done while the pair were together, although some poems were sent by letter. The songs diffused a spirit of philosemitism in cultured circles (indeed they became perhaps Byron's most genuinely popular work); but they were used as the basis for settings by many other composers in the nineteenth century, both Jewish (Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Joachim, Max Bruch, and Frances Lyon Cohen (who wrote his own arrangements between 1894-1904 after warming to Nathan's approach) and gentile (Schumann, Loewe, Bruch, Mussorgsky, Balakirev, and others). The Hebrew Melodies were at the forefront of a fashionable movement in the early nineteenth century in which Haskalah ideas of the Jewish Enlightenment were considered exotic. The Haskalah promoted aspirational values of religious emancipation, education, and equality.

Nathan's wrote four significant theoretical works. His "Essay on the History and Theory of Music" (1823) documented the Neapolitan bel canto tradition of Nicola Porpora, and he proposed it as a curriculum for the newly established Royal Academy of Music (London). This curriculum was later copied extensively by Manual García (1805–1906), whose subsequent books on singing are still relied upon as an authority on historical approaches to singing teaching. In his first treatise, Nathan argued for a publicly funded school of music and addressed it to King George IV. The king granted a royal charter a few years later in 1830. In 1836, Nathan published his most famous treatise, Musurgia vocalis. This work drew on ancient theorists and tried to explain the legendary power of music to create an emotional response in listeners. Again, Nathan advocated for public music education, and four years later the British government granted a sum of 30,000 pounds for a new public school of music.

In Australia, Nathan wrote a series of lectures on the history and theory of music, and delivered these at Sydney College in 1844, and published them in 1846 appealing to Charles Augustus FitzRoy, the governor of New South Wales to fund music education. Nathan was the singing teacher at the time for Lady Fitzroy (the Governor's wife). In 1849, Nathan published The Southern Euphrosyne featuring fragments of Aboriginal songs, excerpts of Australian melodies, national anthems, and Australia's first opera. He sent it to Queen Victoria to give to Prince Albert as a gift, and petitioned her to consider his loyalty, and bring him back to London to drink tea with her. In 1850, Governor Fitzroy announced "An Act to Incorporate and Endow the University of Sydney", and in 1858, Queen Victoria granted a Royal Charter to fund the institution.

Nathan's indomitable refusal to admit defeat and to overcome challenges means that readers often connect with him. His life follows the traditional "hero's narrative" through which he was constantly knocked down, and found ways to eventually succeed. His legacy is perhaps his greatest success. He made contributions to institutions, his student lineage and his descendants have often made significant contributions to Australian music and Australian society more broadly, and his compositions and theoretical works can often be characterised as historically important. Some scholars suggested that Nathan should be remembered as "the father of Australian music".

Between, 2016 and 2024, many discoveries have been made about the contributions made by Isaac Nathan to Australian music, and there is much more work to be done.

References

Sources

• Conway, David (2012). Jewry in Music: Entry to the Profession from the Enlightenment to Richard Wagner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-01538-8.

Crowden, David (2024). Isaac Nathan (1792–1864) and his contributions to Australian music in the mid–nineteenth century: a foundational fusion of musical traditions in New South Wales (1841–1864). PhD Thesis, School of Music, The University of Queensland.https://doi.org/10.14264/06ca19e

Further reading

• Burwick, Frederick; Douglass, Paul (1988), A Selection of Hebrew melodies, ancient and modern, by Isaac Nathan and Lord Byron, University of Alabama Press, ISBN 0-8173-0373-1
• Crowden, David (2018). "Isaac Nathan: the Biographical Puzzle: Part 1, England 1791–1840". Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, 23, 4, (2018). 640–671.
• Crowden, David (2019). "Isaac Nathan Biographical Context Part 2: Australia 1841–1864". Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal 24, 2 (2019). 224–271.
• Crowden, David (2024). Isaac Nathan (1792–1864) and his contributions to Australian music in the mid–nineteenth century: a foundational fusion of musical traditions in New South Wales (1841–1864). PhD Thesis, School of Music, The University of Queensland.https://doi.org/10.14264/06ca19e
• Nathan, Isaac (1836) Musurgia vocalis : an essay on the history and theory of music and on the qualities, capabilities, and management of the human voice. London: Fentum, 1836.
• Serle, Percival (1949). "Nathan, Isaac". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
• Slonimsky, Nicolas (ed.) Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, New York: G. Schirmer, 1958.
• Young, Percy M. (1990) "Review of Burwick & Douglass", in Music & Letters, vol. 71, no. 1 (February 1990), pp. 148–150

External links

• Free scores by Isaac Nathan at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• "Isaac Nathan", Australian Music Centre
• "Isaac Nathan and Lady Caroline Lamb", Caro: The Lady Caroline Lamb Website
• "Leichhardt's Grave" on YouTube, words by Robert Lynd; Nyssa Milligan, soprano; Katrina Faulds, piano
• "Thy Greeting Home Again, A Paean on Leichhardt's Return from Port Essington" on YouTube, James Doig, tenor; Katrina Faulds, piano