Isaac Nathan (1792 – 15 January 1864)[2] was an English composer, musicologist, journalist and self-publicist, who has been called the "father of Australian music",[3] having assisted the careers of numerous colonial musicians during his twenty year residence in Australia.

However, he made significant contributions as a singing teacher and music historian during his time at St James Palace and as a composer of opera in the Royal Theatres (1823–1833).

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.

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.

His hot temper probably accounts for a duel he fought over the honour of Lady Caroline Lamb, and his assault on an Irish nobleman who he thought had impugned one of his female pupils.

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 – but it became involved in complex legal disputes.

One of his pupils was another great 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'.

[8] From 1837–1839, Nathan was entrusted by King William IV with an espionage mission and given a letter with Royal Seal guaranteeing his protection and indemnity.

He was required to use his charisma and charm to persuade Sarah Woodward (an authoress) 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.

However, 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 Palace today.

When 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.

[9] On 3 May 1847, his Don John of Austria, the first opera to be written, composed and produced in Australia, was performed at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney.

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.

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) 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.

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.