Hebrew Melodies First Edition - Byron - Bauman Rare Books

Hebrew Melodies

BYRON

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Hebrew Melodies

Hebrew Melodies

“SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY, LIKE THE NIGHT”: FIRST EDITION OF BYRON’S HEBREW MELODIES, 1815

BYRON, Lord [George Gordon]. Hebrew Melodies. London: John Murray, 1815. Slim octavo, modern full marbled calf rebacked with original spine laid down, red morocco spine label, marbled endpapers, original stiff brown paper wrappers bound in; pp. 53.

First edition of Byron’s eloquent lyrics inspired by the Hebrew Bible, with “She Walks In Beauty”—considered his greatest short poem—and others herein written while courting and on his honeymoon with Annabella Milbanke. With original stiff brown paper wrappers bound in.

With Hebrew Melodies, Lord Byron was “to provide the words for a collection of mainly holy songs for the Jewish composer Isaac Nathan. Nathan is important as the first composer to recognize the innate musicality of Byron’s poetry, the quality to be exploited by later 19th-century Romantic composers, especially Mendelssohn… to Nathan [Byron] showed the sympathy easily aroused in him by peoples who had been reviled and dispossessed in history” (MacCarthy, 239). Byron wrote many of these poems while courting and on his honeymoon with Annabella Milbanke. Byron wrote to his fiancée “about the authenticity of Nathan’s musical setting: his words would be accompanied by the ‘real old undisputed Hebrew melodies,’ he told her, ‘which are beautiful & to which David & the prophets actually sang the songs of Zion.’ He had already written ‘nine or ten [poems] on the sacred model—partly from Job &c. & partly my own imagination” (Eisler, 454). Featuring several of Byron’s best-known poems, including “She Walks in Beauty” and “If That High World.” First edition with uncorrected “Semnacherib.” Bound with half title; without rear advertisement leaves. Original stiff brown plain paper wrappers bound in. Preceded by two months by the publication of Nathan’s musical score with Byron’s lyrics. Randolph, 50-51. Wise I:103-04.

Near-fine condition.

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