The LYREBIRD PRESS is a small publisher of scholarly books about music and music making in Australia and New Zealand. It shares the name of Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre (The Lyrebird Press), which was established in Paris by Melbourne-born publisher and patron of the arts Louise Hanson-Dyer (1884–1962) in 1932. Lyrebird upholds the L’Oiseau-Lyre tradition of scrupulously edited and attractively designed publications.
Lyrebird Press publishes the peer-reviewed series Australasian Music Research (AMR), maintaining a title that began as a journal in 1996 and, from volume nine onwards, became an irregular monograph series. Lyrebird also publishes peer-reviewed books on music and Australia that sit outside AMR’s parameters. Examples include scholarly collections of edited letters and books of a shorter length. Lyrebird Press is not currently publishing editions of notated music.
Lyrebird Press is supported by the Hanson Bequests at the University of Melbourne through the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.
Lyrebird Press (Australia) was established at the University of Melbourne in 2006 to continue the work of Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre (Paris & Monaco).
Header image: Claire Bonnor
This book on the Australian music publisher and patron Louise Hanson-Dyer brings together, for the first time, an international group of scholars with expertise in the history of early French musicology and sound recording; fine art and design; and critical editions and music publishing in France. With a focus on the interwar period, it aims to synchronise Hanson-Dyer’s Melbourne and Paris ventures, seeing her work in a global perspective and showing how she played a significant role in the transnational cultural relationship between Australia and France. Hanson-Dyer had vision and objectives and the drive to realise them; this volume situates the consolidation of her role as cultural activist in early twentieth-century Europe and Australia and presents new light on her publication of critical musical editions, her art collections and early sound recordings.
Edited by Kerry Murphy and Jennifer Hill. Including chapters by Kerry Murphy, Gerard Vaughan, Sarah Kirby, Catherine Massip, Susan Daniels, Rachel Orzech, Thalia Laughlin, Carina Nandlal, Madeline Roycroft and Isabelle Ragnard.
See this book in the Lyrebird shop here.
Our Lyrebird catalogue 2024 provides details of all books published since 2012, including our latest publications. For further information and purchases see the Books page (via the menu on the top right of the home page) or visit the online Lyrebird shop.
On Saturday 6 April 2024 Dr Rosemary Richards will speak at the Family History Connections meeting for the Early Victoria and Tasmania Interest Group (FHC-EVTIG) held at the Blackburn RSL at 10am. She will discuss Memories of Musical Lives: Music and Dance in Personal Music Collections from Australia and New Zealand (Lyrebird, 2022), focusing on the musical collections of two immigrants to early Melbourne, Georgiana McCrae and Robert Wrede, with musical interludes performed by Clara Adams accompanied by David Adams. Further information, including the address of the meeting, can be found on her website.
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BOOK LAUNCH: PURSUIT OF THE NEW
Pursuit of the New: Louise Hanson-Dyer, Publisher and Collector, edited by Kerry Murphy and Jennifer Hill, with contributions from Jim Davidson, Gerard Vaughan, Sarah Kirby, Catherine Massip, Susan Daniels, Rachel Orzech, Thalia Laughlin, Carina Nandlal, Madeline Roycroft and Isabelle Ragnard, will be launched at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music on 28 February 2024. The book is now available in both print and digital formats in the online shop here.
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BOOK LAUNCH: MEMORIES OF MUSICAL LIVES
Memories of Musical Lives, edited by Rosemary Richards and Julja Szuster, was launched at the conference of the Musicological Society of Australia held in Adelaide in November 2023, in the presence of both editors. Further details can be found on the Books page of the website and in the online shop here. A review of the book by Duncan Stuart Warren Reid has appeared in Musicology Australia and can be read here.