45 Facts About Isaac Nathan

Isaac Nathan was an 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.

Isaac Nathan is best known for the success of his Hebrew Melodies in London.

Isaac 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.

Isaac Nathan was born 1790 in the English city of Canterbury to a chazzan born in Poland, Menahem Monash "Polack", and his English Jewish wife, Mary Goldsmid.

Isaac Nathan was initially destined for his father's career and went to the Jewish night school of Solomon Lyon in Cambridge.

In 1813 Isaac Nathan conceived the idea of publishing settings of tunes from synagogue usage and persuaded Lord Byron to provide the words for these.

Isaac 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.

However they were the first attempt to set out the traditional music of the synagogue, with which Isaac Nathan was well acquainted through his upbringing, before the general public.

Isaac Nathan was a singing teacher at the St James's Palace for a time, and claimed that one of his students was the Princess Royal, Princess Charlotte, and music librarian to the Prince Regent, later George IV.

Isaac Nathan undertook a runaway marriage with a music pupil, and another after his first wife's early death.

Isaac 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.

Isaac Nathan attempted a publishing business in partnership with his brother Barnett Nathan, who later became proprietor of Rosherville Gardens.

Isaac Nathan fled to the west of England to hide from debt collectors.

In 1823, Isaac Nathan's father died, and he returned to London possibly with the aid of an inheritance.

Isaac Nathan published a history of music, 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.

Isaac Nathan's treatise was later copied extensively by others including Domenic Crivelli, and Manuel Garcia II, who was sent a copy in 1836.

Isaac Nathan was not successful in his aspiration to be the professor of singing at the Royal Academy of Music, but he was given a consolation of sorts, being appointed to write opera for the Royal Theatres.

Isaac Nathan wrote no less than five operas between 1823 and 1833, and many of his songs became extremely popular.

Isaac Nathan wrote frequently for the popular press in London on boxing and music.

Isaac Nathan was one of the best singing teachers in the world 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.

Isaac Nathan was required to use his charisma and charm to persuade Sarah Woodward to hand over copies of a book called The Secret History which proposed to reveal the true identity of a second child of King George IV.

Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, wanted Isaac Nathan to give him the documents.

However, Isaac Nathan did not trust the man, and instead secretly gave the documents to the king's brother, and they remain in the Royal Archives of Windsor Castle today.

When Isaac Nathan went to the treasury to claim his expenses for the mission, Lord Melbourne intervened, took the letter with the seal of King William IV and refused to pay the balance requested.

Isaac Nathan sold everything he had and gathered his family and moved to Australia.

Isaac Nathan emigrated to Australia with his children, arriving in April 1841.

Isaac Nathan gave first or early performances in Australia of many of the works of Mozart and Beethoven.

Isaac Nathan was the first to research and transcribe Australian Aboriginal music; he set lyrics by the poet Eliza Hamilton Dunlop.

Isaac Nathan wrote Australia's first operas, Merry Freaks in Troublous Times and Don John of Austria, and Australia's first song cycle, The Australian Melodies.

Isaac Nathan made significant contributions as a singing teacher, and as one of the country's earliest music journalists.

Isaac Nathan published prolifically with announcements, advertisements, analysis, context, lyrics and reviews.

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

On 15 January 1864 Isaac 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: Isaac Nathan was Australia's first tram fatality.

Isaac Nathan was buried in Sydney; his tomb is at Camperdown Cemetery.

Isaac Nathan continued recomposing these songs and others with the last formal publications occurring in Sydney in 1861.

For some songs, Isaac Nathan played music at the piano, and Byron was struck with a flash of inspiration to write the prose.

In 1836, Isaac Nathan published his most famous treatise, Musurgia vocalis.

Again, Isaac 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.

Isaac Nathan was the singing teacher at the time for Lady Fitzroy.

In 1849, Isaac Nathan published The Southern Euphrosyne featuring fragments of Aboriginal songs, excerpts of Australian melodies, national anthems, and Australia's first opera.

Isaac Nathan 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.

Isaac Nathan's life follows the traditional "hero's narrative" through which he was constantly knocked down, and found ways to eventually succeed.

Isaac Nathan 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 Isaac Nathan should be remembered by as "the father of Australian music".