How many Jews have read Lord Byron’s She Walks in Beauty like the Night without ever suspecting that it was specifically written to be sung to a Sephardic tune for Lecha Dodi?
As the Romantic movement reached its crescendo across Europe in the early nineteenth century, few collaborations seemed as unlikely – and as fruitful – as that between Lord Byron, the scion of English nobility and a literary enfant terrible, and Isaac Nathan, an observant Anglo-Jewish composer and musicologist. Their collaboration on the Hebrew Melodies, published between 1815 and 1817, represents not only a unique intersection of high Romantic literature and traditional Jewish liturgical music, but also a rare moment of artistic fraternity between a Gentile cultural icon and a committed Jew in an era when Jews remained marginalized across much of Europe. The figure of Byron has often been surrounded by an aura of rebellion and transgression, and his involvement in the Hebrew Melodies has frequently been misunderstood or dismissed as a mere passing fancy, but a closer look reveals something more enduring: an expression of literary sympathy, political radicalism, and spiritual fascination that illuminates Byron’s broader relationship with Jewish tradition and its historical plight.
Isaac Nathan (1792-1864) was a Jewish English composer, musicologist, and journalist best known, however, for the success of his Hebrew Melodies (1815-1840) in London, as discussed in detail below, although 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). After emigrating to Australia in 1840, where he became known as the “father of Australian music,” he wrote Australia’s first operas and Australia’s first contemporary song cycle which entangled fragments of Aboriginal songlines with European musical traditions.
Born into a musical and rabbinic family in Canterbury, England, Nathan was the son of Menachem Mona Polack (“the Pole”), a synagogue cantor who claimed descent – whether apocryphal or aspirational – from Polish royalty as the illegitimate son of the last Polish King, Stanislaus Paniatowski, by his Jewish mistress. Starting in 1805, Isaac Nathan attended Solomon Lyon’s boarding school in Cambridge, the first in Anglo-Jewry, and he was raised in the Anglo-Jewish Haskalah (enlightenment) environment of Moses Mendelssohn that encouraged the harmonization of Jewish faith with broader European culture.
Menachem wanted his son to carry the family legacy forward by becoming a rabbi, but Nathan enrolled at Cambridge University. However, because the university at the time required students to take Anglican oaths, his refusal to convert to Christianity meant that he could not graduate, a principled stand that was indicative of his lifelong fidelity to Judaism. Even as he pursued a career in the highest echelons of the British musical world, he steadfastly refused to assimilate, as had most his Jewish contemporaries in the world of music and art; indeed, he remained a practicing Jew throughout his life.
Almost inexplicably, however, he married a Christian, Rosetta Worthington and, although she converted to Judaism and was wed in a Jewish ceremony, that was only after their first ceremony in an Anglican ceremony. Scholars debate whether there ever was a real conversion, noting that, although her ketubah survives today, she was buried “at the side” in Bromton Cemetery (rather than in the main Jewish section), indicating that her alleged conversion was not recognized by the Jewish community. Nathan’s second marriage was to Henrietta Buckley, but she, too, was a Christian, who also underwent a dubious conversion and was not buried in a Jewish section of the cemetery.
Yet, his most important cultural contribution lay in his effort to preserve and disseminate the music of the synagogue, especially its ancient chants and melodies, which he believed – or at least claimed – had originated in the Temple in Jerusalem and had survived centuries of exile. Later musicological scholarship would reveal that many of these tunes were more likely derived from European folk traditions that had been absorbed into traditional synagogue practice, except for six that are generally considered to be synagogal:
(1) She Walks in Beauty like the Night, a former tune for Lechah Dodi in the London synagogues;
(2) The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept, the melody for Ya’aleh, the opening hymn of the Kol Nidre service;
(3) If That High World, a tender song still chanted in London synagogues in the kaddish after the Torah reading on Shabbat and Yom Tov;
(4) The Wild Gazelle, a rollicking tune to which the hymn Yigdal has for 150 years been sung in the Great Synagogue in London;
(5) Oh, Weep for Those That Wept by Babel’s Stream, an empirical adaptation of Birkat Kohanim blended with a European folk melody that had entered the synagogue tradition; and
(6) On Jordan’s Banks, an adaptation of the Maoz Tzur sung on Chanukah.
Hebrew Melodies was the first attempt to set out the traditional music of the synagogue, with which Nathan was well acquainted through his upbringing, before the public. There is an interesting dispute with respect to the role that famous Jewish singer John Braham played in the project. Some historians argue that, to assist sales, Nathan recruited him to merely place his name on the title page, in return for a share of profits although Braham, in fact, took no part in the creation of the Melodies. Other authorities credit Braham with being heavily involved in arranging and composing certain of the Melodies, including The Destruction of Sennacherib, Francisca, and The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept.
Braham (1774-1858) was an English tenor whose long career led him to become one of Europe’s leading opera stars, and his success in marrying into the British aristocracy was a notable example of Jewish social mobility in the early 19th century. While his origins are uncertain – he may have been the son of John Abraham and Esther Lyon, who may have been a sister of Myer Lyon, the chazzan at the Great Synagogue of London (but no clear documentary evidence exists) – it is fairly certain that he was orphaned at an early age and there are stories about him selling pencils in the street as an urchin, a common trade for the Jewish poor at the time. Braham was a meshorrer (singer) at the Great Synagogue, where his abilities were noted by Lyon, who led a double life as an operatic tenor at the theatre at Covent Garden under the name Michaele Leoni. Braham’s Jewishness remained a prominent feature of his career and, as one of the most famous English Jew of this period, he became a significant incarnation of “the Jew” in the British consciousness. He was also a regular supporter of Jewish charities and causes.
Nathan’s research led him into synagogues across England, where he documented a variety of melodies still in use, and he began composing arrangements for piano and voice and set about creating a musical collection that would popularize these “Hebrew Melodies” for an English audience. Lacking a poet to write lyrics for these compositions, he first approached Sir Walter Scott, who declined, but he then wrote to Lord Byron (1788-1824), a leading figure in the Romantic movement who was universally recognized as one of the greatest English poets of all time:
I have with great trouble selected a number of very beautiful Hebrew melodies of undoubted antiquity, some of which are proved to have been sung by the Hebrews before the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem… I am most anxious that the poetry for them should be written by the first Poet of the present age.
After some initial reticence, Byron became an enthusiastic supporter of the project; he ultimately composed thirty poems for Nathan and gave him the copyrights. In an enthusiastic letter to his fiancée, Annabella Milbanke, he revealed the extent to which he had immersed himself in Jewish lore for the Hebrew Melodies project:
[I wrote] words for a musical composer who is going to publish the real old undisputed Hebrew Melodies which are beautiful & to which David & the prophets actually sang the “songs of Zion;” I have done 9 or 10 on the sacred model, partly from Job & partly my own imagination… It is odd enough that this should fall to my lot – who have been abused as “an infidel” – Augusta [his half-sister] says “they will call me a Jew next.”
This mixture of irony and earnestness is characteristically Byron; though he seems to distance himself with a self-deprecating tone, it is clear that he felt a profound identification with the pathos and historical dignity of Jewish experience.
That Byron agreed to work with a Jewish composer on explicitly Jewish material was not only a literary act, but also a political and cultural one; at a time when most of Britain still regarded Jews with suspicion or contempt, Byron displayed both admiration and sympathy for the Jewish people, which he expressed repeatedly in his letters, his poetry, and his political commitments. He was especially attracted to the figure of the biblical Hebrew as a prototype of the Romantic outcast: proud, persecuted, and bearing witness to an ancient and noble tradition.
One of the most striking aspects of the Hebrew Melodies is the care that Byron took in adapting Jewish themes. Though he could easily have turned the project into a sentimental or Orientalist pastiche, he approached the material with a seriousness and sympathy rare in Christian writers of the time. Poems like The Destruction of Sennacherib, By the Rivers of Babylon, and The Wild Gazelle are infused with biblical allusion, exile motifs, and a tone of spiritual defiance that reflects not only Jewish suffering, but also Byron’s own self-image as a marginalized and misunderstood prophet. The choice of images and themes in these poems reveals his deep reading of the Hebrew Bible and his affinity for Jewish resistance to tyranny.
Nowhere is this sympathy more beautifully rendered than in She Walks in Beauty, the most famous of the Hebrew Melodies:
She walks in beauty, like the night
of cloudless climes and starry skies;
and all that’s best of dark and bright
meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
which heaven to gaudy day denies.One shade the more, one ray the less,
had half impaired the nameless grace
which waves in every raven tress,
or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
how pure, how dear their dwelling-place!…
While often read today as a romantic lyric, it was composed to be sung to a Sephardic tune formerly used for Lecha Dodi, the mystical hymn welcoming Shabbat. The overlay of a modern English love poem onto an ancient Hebrew liturgical melody exemplifies the Romantic longing for fusion between the sacred and the sensual, the historical and the contemporary, and Byron’s lyrics, in their simplicity and grace, convey a spiritualized beauty reminiscent of the Sabbath Queen, the kabbalistic feminine embodiment of holiness that Lecha Dodi celebrates. That Byron was willing to collaborate on a song rooted in Jewish mystical tradition further suggests that he saw Judaism not as a fossilized faith but as a living source of poetic inspiration.
Nathan himself emphasized the religious authenticity of the music, claiming the melodies were sung by “David and the prophets” and, while modern scholars have debunked such claims as largely romantic fabrications, as discussed above, the perception ultimately mattered more than the provenance. For Byron and his contemporaries, the Jewish tradition represented both antiquity and endurance, an emblem of sublime suffering and unwavering faith and, in this sense, his Romanticism was deeply compatible with Jewish historical memory: both exalted passion, exile, and longing for redemption.
The success of Hebrew Melodies gave Nathan fame and notoriety, and his professional triumph was notable in an era when Jews still faced legal disabilities and social exclusion in Britain. (While civil emancipation for Jews would not arrive until the middle of the century, the reign of George III saw a limited easing of anti-Jewish prejudice among the educated classes). He obtained royal appointments as music master to Princess Charlotte and musical librarian to the Prince Regent (later King George IV), and his edition of the Hebrew Melodies was dedicated to the Princess by royal permission. One of his many students was the young Robert Browning, who years later would praise his former teacher for employing “certain traditional Jewish methods of developing the voice.”
Byron’s interest in Jews was not confined to the biblical or poetic realm. He took a keen interest in the contemporary condition of Jews in Europe and the Middle East; he was appalled by their legal and social status and praised their resilience in the face of millennia of persecution. His defense of the Jews in his correspondence and poetry may be linked to his broader support for revolutionary and nationalist movements; just as he supported the Greek war of independence and condemned Ottoman tyranny, he viewed the Jews as an oppressed people with a rightful claim to dignity and self-determination. In this way, his philosemitism can be seen as part of a broader political idealism that sought to liberate all subject peoples, including the Jews.
When Byron went into exile during Passover (1816), his friend Nathan sent matzah along with his wishes that the G-d of Israel protect Byron as He protected the Jewish people during the Exodus:
My Lord, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of sending your Lordship some holy biscuits, commonly called unleavened bread, and denominated by the Nazarites Motsas, better known in this enlightened age by the epithet Passover cakes; and as a certain angel by his presence, ensured the safety of a whole nation, may the same guardian spirit pass with your Lordship to that land where the fates may have decreed you to sojourn for a while.
A grateful Byron, displaying both his mordant wit and his broad familiarity with the Jewish tradition and practice that infused many of his works, responded:
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your very seasonable bequest, which I duly appreciate; the unleavened bread shall certainly accompany me in my pilgrimage; and with full reliance on their efficacy, the motsas shall be to me a charm against the destroying Angel wherever I may sojourn; his serene highness [i.e., the King] will, I hope, be polite enough to keep at a desirable distance from my person, without the necessity of my smearing my door post or upper lintels with the blood of any animal.
This passage reveals not only Byron’s delight in Jewish ritual imagery, but also the way he cast himself, in a typically “Byronic” twist, as a kind of modern Moses or exile, pursued by tyrants and guided by ancient signs.
In Byron’s broader literary corpus, Jews appear in a variety of guises, from wandering exiles to heroic sufferers. In The Vision of Judgment, a scathing satire of royalist sentiment, Byron mocks Christian sanctimony while highlighting the hypocrisy of a Christian society that derides Jews while embracing injustice. In his personal writings, he denounced the bigotry of his fellow aristocrats and openly admired the endurance and intelligence of Jewish communities. He rejected the stereotype of the Jew as miser or villain, a trope ubiquitous in English literature since Shakespeare’s Shylock, and instead crafted a portrait of the Jew as a fellow Romantic: a wanderer, a rebel, a bearer of ancient truths.
For Nathan, the Hebrew Melodies project was both a professional opportunity and a religious mission, and he believed that the exposure of Jewish music to a broader audience would encourage respect for Jewish culture and challenge prevailing antisemitic attitudes. His later career took him to Australia, where he became a foundational figure in that country’s musical history. However, again his Jewish practice was arguably inconsistent, even contradictory: on one hand, he never relinquished his Jewish identity or his pride in the Hebrew Melodies, he presided over the opening of the first Australian synagogue, and he served as musical adviser to the synagogue in Sydney, but, on the other hand, he again married a non-Jew, as discussed above, and he had his children baptized.
Nathan never relinquished his deep friendship for Byron; in Australia, he would refer to his home in Sydney as “Byron’s Lodge” and, in 1823, while still in England, he wrote Musurgia Vocalis, An Essay on the History and Theory of Music, and on the Qualities, Capabilities, and Management of the Human Voice, which emphasized “the Jewish contribution to vocal music” and contains anecdotal insights into Byron and Nathan’s collaboration on Hebrew Melodies. Nor did Nathan lose his affection for Jewish music and subjects after moving to Australia. His second Australian opera, the comic Don John of Austria (1847), tells the story of a Spanish-Jewish heroine who falls in love with Don John, who discovers, by the end of the opera, that he, too, is Jewish – and all ends well.
Exhibited here is a very rare item from the author’s collection, Lord Byron’s On Parting set to music written, published, and originally signed by Nathan (see lower right):
The kiss, dear maid! Thy lip has left
shall never part from mine,
Till happier hours restore the gift,
untainted back to thine.Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,
An equal love may see;
The tear that from thine eyelid streams,
Can weep no change in me…Nor need I write – to tell the tale
My pen were doubly weak;
Oh! What can word avail,
Unless the heart could speak?By day or night, in weal or woe,
That heart, no longer free,
Must bear the love it cannot show,
And silent ache for thee.
Unfortunately, Nathan’s arrangements mostly faded into obscurity, overshadowed by Byron’s enduring literary fame. However, UCLA Professor Fred Burwick published a new edition of the original poems and music (1988) and persuaded professional musicians to record performances of thirteen of the original twenty-nine poems; interested readers may hear the lyrics and music together at www.sjsu.edu/faculty/douglass/music/album-hebrew.html. Even today, few readers of Byron are aware that some of his most evocative poems were composed in collaboration with a devout Jew, set to melodies heard in London synagogues, and infused with the spiritual vocabulary of Hebrew Scripture. The rediscovery of this cultural moment invites a reconsideration not only of Byron’s literary achievement, but also his moral imagination: his ability to see in Jewish tradition not a relic of the past but a living source of poetic truth.
In one of those great ironies of history, Nathan became the first person in Australia – indeed, in the entire southern hemisphere, to be killed by a tram car when, on January 15, 1864, he was crushed by a horse-drawn tram – the first one in Sydney – near his home after alighting from the vehicle. And, finally, I simply cannot end this article without noting that Isaac’s grandson, Harry Nathan, wrote and published the music for Australia’s most beloved and timeless song, Waltzing Matilda. (All together now: “Once a jolly swagman, camped by a billabong, under the shade of a coolabah tree… “)