Hebrew Melodies

Nathan was an aspiring composer who was the son of a hazzan (synagogue cantor) of Canterbury, of Polish-Jewish ancestry, and was originally educated to be a rabbi. He had published an advertisement in the London Gentleman's Magazine in May 1813 that he was "about to publish 'Hebrew Melodies', all of them upward of 1000 years old and some of them performed by the Ancient Hebrews before the destruction of the Temple." At this stage, he had no words to go with the melodies which he intended to adapt from synagogue usage (although in fact many of these tunes had originated as European folk-melodies and did not have the ancestry he claimed for them). He initially approached Walter Scott, before writing to Byron in 1814. Eventually Byron was encouraged by his friend Douglas Kinnaird to take up Nathan's proposal. Many of the poems were written during the period of Byron's sessions with Nathan between October 1814 and February 1815; a few, including "She Walks in Beauty" and "I speak not I trace not I breathe not", predate their meeting.

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