Summary
Nathan's Hebrew Melodies must rank as a real achievement; Nathan's music for them was in print in England at least until the 1850s and was known across Europe.
Moreover, Nathan can claim some credit as inspiring Byron's texts. These not only in themselves 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 Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn, Joachim) and gentile (Schumann, Loewe, Mussorgsky, Balakirev, and others).
Nathan's writings on music had little direct influence, small sales, and received no serious reviews in the press. In isolation, he struck upon and highlighted a theme which was at the time a major concern of the Jewish intellectual movement in Germany; the delineation and promotion of a genuine Jewish culture. The same spirit seems to have motivated his pioneering work with the music of the indigenous Australians.
Finally, Nathan's indomitable refusal to admit defeat in life in exile — he undoubtedly paralleled himself with his hero Byron — has enabled him, from his concertising and writings on Aboriginal music, to be justly remembered by antipodean musicologists as "the father of Australian music".
Read more about this topic: Isaac Nathan
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