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
Our Catalogue 2023 provides details of all books published since 2012, including our 2022 publications, Lesbian/Opera by Emily Wilbourne and Memories of Musical Lives, edited by Rosemary Richards and Julja Szuster. 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.
LESBIAN/OPERA: ELENA KATS-CHERNIN’S IPHIS AND MATRICIDE: THE MUSICAL
By Emily Wilbourne
Taking opera as an explicitly gendered phenomenon, Emily Wilbourne interrogates the position of the female composer in relationship to her work. With reference to Elena Kats-Chernin’s operas Iphis and Matricide: The Musical, both of which depict a lesbian relationship, and drawing upon interviews with the composer herself, Wilbourne produces an audacious analysis of the relationship of gender and opera, providing arresting insights into the work of one of Australia’s most admired composers.
Emily Wilbourne is Associate Professor of Musicology at Queens College and the Graduate Center in the City University of New York.
Published in December 2022 in paperback and ebook. See this book in the online shop here.
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MEMORIES OF MUSICAL LIVES: MUSIC AND DANCE IN PERSONAL MUSIC COLLECTIONS FROM AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
Edited by Rosemary Richards and Julja Szuster, with contributions from Julja Szuster, Rosemary Richards, Shane Lestideau, Kirstine Moffat, Clare Gleeson, Heather Blasdale Clarke, Elizabeth Nichol, Matthew Stephens, Aline Scott-Maxwell and John Whiteoak.
Music-lovers from Australia and New Zealand have collected and bound sheet music and handwritten music since the earliest years of settlement. In these nine essays, the authors discuss music and dance collections found in libraries, historic houses, archives and homes, explaining what these cherished artefacts reveal about the owners, their emotional life and their musical practice. Beautifully illustrated, and with suggestions for how these collections might be further explored or disseminated, this is a landmark book in the history of music in private life.
Rosemary Richards is an Australian musicologist, teacher, performer and collector. Her research has explored the biographical, historical and musical significance of manuscript music collections belonging to Georgiana McCrae (1804–90) and her contemporaries.
Julja Szuster is a musicologist and Visiting Research Fellow at the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide. Her research interests include music in colonial Australia and seventeenth-century Italian Baroque music.
Published in December 2022 in paperback and ebook. See this book in the online shop here.