Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Natali [Natale], Pompeo

(b Ripatransone, nr Ascoli Piceno; d ?Rome, after 1681). Italian composer, organist and teacher. A priest, he was maestro di cappella and organist of Tivoli Cathedral from December 1651 to December 1652. He then moved to Rome and became chaplain and maestro di cappella of S Maria Maggiore. He later founded a music school there which enjoyed a great reputation; G.O. Pitoni was a pupil in the early 1660s. As a composer he is of little consequence. His two volumes of solfeggi possibly originated as teaching material in his school; like his two earlier books of madrigals, they are for small forces.

WORKS

Madrigali, 3 equal vv (Rome, 1656)

Madrigali e canzoni spirituali e morali, 2–3vv (Rome, 1662)

Solfeggiamenti … per cantare e suonare, 2–3vv (Rome, 1674)

Libro secondo solfeggiamenti per cantare, suonare, 2–3vv, vn, vle, fl etc. (Rome, 1681)

Motet, 1672^1

BIBLIOGRAPHY

G. Radiciotti: L’arte musicale in Tivoli nei secoli XVI–XVIII (Tivoli, 1907, enlarged 2/1921)

ARGIA BERTINI

Natalis, N.

(fl 1420–30). Composer, probably active in northern Italy. He is represented only by a three-voice Gloria found in I-Bc Q15. Its texture alternates between discantus–tenor duets marked ‘unus’ and three-part sections marked ‘chorus’; it begins, however, with the discantus alone. The work has interesting rhythmic patterns created through coloration, and strong dissonances which raise doubts about the skill of the composer or copyist. (See also G. de Van: ‘An inventory of the Manuscript Bologna, Liceo Musicale, Q 15 (olim 37)’, MD, ii, 1948, pp.231–57.)

TOM R. WARD

Nathan, Hans

(b Berlin, 5 Aug 1910; d Boston, 4 Aug 1989). American musicologist of German birth. His early schooling in Germany included private study of the piano, conducting, theory and stagecraft. In 1934 he received the doctorate in musicology from Berlin University, where he studied musicology with Sachs and psychology with Wolfgang Köhler; his university studies also included art history and philosophy. From 1932 to 1936 Nathan was a music critic in Berlin. After emigrating to the USA, he devoted two years to postgraduate study in musicology at Harvard University. In 1945 he was a visiting professor at Tufts University and in 1946 he became a member of the faculty of Michigan State University, from which he retired in 1981.

Nathan’s broad scholarly background led to an equally broad range of musicological interests. His writings cover music from the 13th to the 20th centuries; in all of his work he attempted to place the composition or composer in question in the context of the artistic trends of his time. Negro minstrel music and the works of Dallapiccola were two of his particular enthusiasms. He edited the complete works of William Billings (Boston, 1977), and a volume of Israeli folk music (Madison, WI, 1994).

WRITINGS

‘The Function of Text in French 13th-Century Motets’, MQ, xxviii (1942), 445–62

‘The Sense of History in Musical Interpretation’, MR, xiii (1952), 85–100

‘The Twelve-Tone Compositions of Luigi Dallapiccola’, MQ, xliv (1958), 289–310

‘Hungary’, ‘United States of America’, A History of Song, ed. D. Stevens (London, 1960), 272–92, 408–60

Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (Norman, OK, 1962)

‘Luigi Dallapiccola: Fragments from Conversations’, MR, xxvii (1966), 294–312

‘American Panoramas of Twentieth Century Music: Methods and Results’, American Choral Review, xi/4 (1969)

‘William Billings: a Bibliography’, Notes, xxix (1973), 658–70

‘Considérations sur la manière de travailler de Luigi Dallapiccola’, SMz, cxv (1975), 180–93

William Billings: Data and Documents (Detroit, 1976)

‘On Dallapiccola's Working Methods’, PNM, xv/2 (1976–7), 34–57

‘Music and Dance in Paris about 1910, as Judged by Contemporaries’, Studi musicali, xv (1986), 311–37

PAULA MORGAN

Nathan, Isaac

(b Canterbury, 1790; d Sydney, 15 Jan 1864). Australian composer of Polish descent and English birth. Educated at Cambridge by Solomon Lyon from 1805, he was apprenticed by his father to Domenico Corri in London (1809) for training in singing and composition. His introduction to Lord Byron in 1814 led to their collaboration in the Hebrew Melodies (1815–19), for which Nathan adapted ancient Jewish chants to Byron’s poems; the songs were first sung in London by John Braham and were an instant success, remaining in print until 1861. They were at once the basis and highlight of Nathan’s English career, which was fostered by his association with Lady Caroline Lamb, his pupil the Princess Charlotte and the court circles of George IV, to whom he was music librarian and perhaps secret agent. He supported himself with writing, teaching and running a music warehouse and publishing business; he also made an undistinguished stage appearance as Bertram in Henry Bishop’s Guy Mannering (1816) at Covent Garden. In recurring periods of financial distress, he wrote and published several comic operas and burlettas with the librettist James Kenney, including a pasticcio opera Sweethearts and Wives (1823) from which the song Why are you wand’ring here, I pray? was still in print in 1883. But he was eventually ruined financially by some unspecified services to William IV and decided to emigrate to Australia in 1841.

In February 1841 Nathan arrived in Melbourne, where he gave several well-publicized concerts before settling in Sydney two months later. He immediately opened a singing academy, became choral director of St Mary’s Cathedral and arranged an inaugural concert of Classical sacred works. Soon he established himself as a prominent member of society by his ready production of patriotic odes, including Australia the Wide and Free for the first municipal council of Sydney (1842) and Loyalty, a National Paean. Among his more ephemeral colonial works are Currency Lasses for the 58th anniversary of the founding of Sydney (1846), Leichhardt’s Grave, an elegiac ode mourning the presumed death of Ludwig Leichhardt in 1846, and its instant sequel Thy Greeting Home Again for the explorer’s unexpected return. His last composition, A Song to Freedom (1863), was written as a gift to Queen Victoria. A more original contribution to Australian culture was Nathan’s precise observation of Aboriginal musical practice and his experiments in transcribing Aboriginal music, including Koorinda Braia (1842) and a series of Australian melodies published in his miscellany The Southern Euphrosyne in 1849. Unfortunately, he interpreted native tribal chant within the conventions of the 19th-century drawing-room.

Nathan set up his own musical type and publishing business, gave the first concerts of madrigals and contributed to many early performances of opera in Sydney, arranging, orchestrating and copying parts as well as directing performances from the keyboard. As a teacher and conductor he assisted early colonial musicians in their concert careers, and lectured on music at Sydney College (1844–6). He was responsible for the first operas written in Australia, neither of which was a financial or artistic success: Merry Freaks in Troublous Times, a comic opera on the life of Charles II composed in 1843 but never fully staged, and Don John of Austria, a historical Spanish romance composed in 1846 and first performed the following year; both suffer from poor librettos and an indebtedness to the more sentimental conventions of contemporary English opera. Three of his London operas were successfully performed in Sydney in the 1840s. Several of his descendants have contributed to music in Australia, including Harry Nathan, claimant to the music of Waltzing Matilda, and the conductor Sir Charles Mackerras.

WORKS

(selective list)

extant MSS and prints in Mitchell Library, Sydney

stage

Sweethearts and Wives (comic op, J. Kenney), London, Haymarket, 7 July 1823, vs, excerpts (London, 1823); collab. J. Whitaker, T.S. Cooke and J. Perry

The Alcaid, or Secrets of Office (comic op, 3, Kenney), London, Haymarket, 10 Aug 1824, vs (London, 1824)

The Illustrious Stranger, or Married and Buried (operatic farce, 2, Kenney and J.G. Millingen), London, Drury Lane, Oct 1827, excerpts (London, 1827)

Triboulet, or the King's Jester (drama, Millingen), London, Sadler's Wells, 1840, lost excerpt, Sydney, Royal Hotel, 29 May 1844, vs

Merry Freaks in Troublous Times (comic op, 2, C. Nagel) (Sydney, 1851)

Don John of Austria (op, 3, J.L. Montefiore), Sydney, Royal Victoria, 7 May 1847, vs (Sydney, n.d.)

other works

Collection of Hebrew Tunes (London, 1815), collab. J. Braham; A Selection of the Hebrew Melodies (Byron), 1–3vv, pf acc. (London, 1815–19); Long Live our Monarch (W. Montague), solo v, 4vv, orch, fs (London, 1830); Koorinda Braia (Sydney, 1842), transcrs. of aboriginal music; Numerous odes, songs, piano pieces

WRITINGS

An Essay on the History and Theory of Music, and on the Qualities, Capabilities and Management of the Human Voice (London, 1823, enlarged 2/1836 as Musurgia vocalis)

ed.: Fugitive Pieces and Reminiscences of Lord Byron (London, 1829)

Memoirs of Madame Malibran de Bériot (London, 3/1836; Ger. trans., 1837)

Series of Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Music (Sydney and London, 1846)

The Southern Euphrosyne and Australian Miscellany (London and Sydney, c1848) [incl. transcrs. of aboriginal music and orig. vocal pieces, pf acc.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AusDB (C.M. Mackerras)

DNB (R.H. Legge)

C.H. Bertie: Isaac Nathan, Australia’s First Composer (Sydney, 1922)

O.S. Phillips: Isaac Nathan, Friend of Byron (London, 1940)

E.R. Dibdin: ‘Isaac Nathan’, ML, xxii (1941), 75–80

C.M. Mackerras: The Hebrew Melodist: a Life of Isaac Nathan (Sydney, 1963)

E. Wood: Australian Opera, 1842–1970: a History of Australian Opera with Descriptive Catalogues (diss., U. of Adelaide, 1979)

ELIZABETH WOOD