Music Research Forum: Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884-1962): Publishing, Patronage, Promotion

Join us for the third in our series of music research talks for 2024, in partnership with the Musicological Society of Australia! The Museum will be open from 5:30pm, with the talk starting at 6pm. No bookings required.

Jennifer Hill, Madeline Roycroft, Rachel Orzech, Sarah Kirby and Kerry Murphy 

Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884–1962): Publishing, Patronage, Promotion

Louise Hanson-Dyer was an Australian music publisher and patron who, after spending many years cultivating knowledge and appreciation of British and French music in Australia, left Melbourne to establish herself in Paris and founded a music publishing company: Les Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre (EOL). The press rapidly gained a reputation as a highly regarded company renowned for working at the forefront of both early and contemporary French music. By the late 1930s, Dyer had branched out into recordings, and EOL continued to produce sought-after print music and recordings until its closure in 2013, many years after Dyer’s death.

Throughout her professional life, in both Australia and Europe, Dyer worked tirelessly to promote new music, support young composers, disseminate knowledge about and appreciation of early music, and educate the public about musical heritage and musical futures. The establishment of EOL was a remarkable success, in large part due to Dyer’s seemingly endless enthusiasm for new projects, but also her extraordinary ability to create and leverage personal and professional networks.

Dyer’s involvement in countless musical and cultural societies and organisations was also at the centre of her work and allowed her to advocate for the musical causes she believed in and make connections with significant musical figures to work with her through EOL and other projects that enhanced musical life in both Europe and Australia.

This panel will present the following four short presentations addressing aspects of Louise Hanon Dyer’s activities as publisher and patron:

Jen Hill and Madeline Roycroft – Louise Hanson-Dyer’s Professional Network: A Data Visualisation

Rachel Orzech – An Imagined French Bayreuth: Les Semaines musicales françaises

Sarah Kirby – Louise Dyer, Patronage, and the British Music Societies of Melbourne and Sydney

Kerry Murphy – Editions de l’Oiseau-lyre Publishing: Some Unusual Case Studies

Jennifer Hill is curator of the University of Melbourne's Rare Music Collection (Archives and Special Collections), which includes the Hanson-Dyer Music Collection of rare imprints and manuscripts and, since 2015, the Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre Archive. She is also a Faculty of Fine Arts and Music honorary fellow with a particular research interest in Australian musicians and music.

Madeline Roycroft recently completed a PhD in musicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. Her thesis examined the reception of Dmitri Schostakovich's music and its intersection with politics in twentieth-century France. Madeline currently works as research and curatorial assistant in the University of Melbourne's Rare Music collection, and as a sessional lecturer in music history at the MCM.

Rachel Orzech is a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. Her current research focuses on notions of musical nationbuilding and cultural exchange through the lens of Louise Dyer and Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre in the interwar period. Her first monograph, Claiming Wagner for France: Music and Politics in the Parisian Press, 1933-1944 was published in 2022 by the University of Rochester Press.

Sarah Kirby is the Grainger Fellow at the Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne. She is a recent doctoral graduate of the Melbourne Conservatorium, where her thesis explored music at international exhibitions in the British Empire throughout the 1880s. She has published widely on music in Britain and Australia, women in music, and music in museums, and she was the 2023 recipient of the McCredie Musicological Award from the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Kerry Murphy is Professor of Musicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests focus chiefly on opera, nineteenth-early twentieth century French music and music criticism and colonial Australian music history and she has published widely in these areas. She is currently researching the impact of travelling virtuosi and opera troupes to Australia and the Australian music publisher and patron, Louise Hanson-Dyer.