Skip to main content
Menu

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

An Australian in Paris

by Angus Trumble, 18 November 2015

Louise, daughter of the Hon. L. L. Smith by Tom Roberts, 1888

This week it is impossible not to contemplate the ways in which France has touched many Australian lives, and Paris in particular continues to charm and inspire us - as it has for more than two centuries: one of only a handful of principal seats of western civilisation: art, music, letters.

Happily, it has been a two-way street. One thinks especially of Louise Berta Mosson Hanson Dyer (1884-1962), the talented musician, patron of music and musical publisher, who, with her husband the linoleum magnate James Dyer, settled permanently in Paris soon after 1927. There she established her musical publishing firm, and named it in honour of her homeland: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre. The first project Louise Dyer undertook was to create a scholarly edition of the entire musical corpus of François Couperin (1668-1733), whose bicentenary was rapidly approaching. When they appeared on schedule in 1933, the full run of twelve volumes created a sensation - for they reintroduced to musicians and the French public alike an important body of music that had long existed only in manuscript form or else in moribund nineteenth-century editions; reintroduced them, moreover, at a level of meticulousness, accuracy, and beauty of production that set new standards for musical publishing everywhere.

Louise Dyer presented the first copy to the President of the Republic (Albert Lebrun). The second to the State Library of Victoria in the city of her birth. Louise Hanson Dyer was made a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur in 1934, and promoted officier in 1957, by which time Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre had produced many volumes of rare music, and had, importantly, branched into classical music recording. Louise Dyer recorded for the first time Monteverdi’s Vespers, as well as the operas of Handel, the stage works of Purcell, and many modern works by Schönberg, Milhaud, Stravinsky and Peggy Glanville-Hicks. Louise Hanson Dyer remained an Australian citizen, but made a huge contribution to the musical culture of France, and of Europe more generally. 

© National Portrait Gallery 2024
King Edward Terrace, Parkes
Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia

Phone +61 2 6102 7000
ABN: 54 74 277 1196

The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

This website comprises and contains copyrighted materials and works. Copyright in all materials and/or works comprising or contained within this website remains with the National Portrait Gallery and other copyright owners as specified.

The National Portrait Gallery respects the artistic and intellectual property rights of others. The use of images of works of art reproduced on this website and all other content may be restricted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Requests for a reproduction of a work of art or other content can be made through a Reproduction request. For further information please contact NPG Copyright.

The National Portrait Gallery is an Australian Government Agency