O'Dwyer, Robert (1862–1949), conductor, composer, and teacher of music, was born 27 January 1862 in Bristol of Irish parentage; his name at birth was Dwyer. He began his career in 1891 conducting the Carl Rosa Opera Company and then toured with the Rousbey Opera Company until 1896. In the following year he settled in Dublin, where he held the post of organist in the Jesuit church of St Francis Xavier, Gardiner Street. In the manner of many musicians of the day, he found supplementary employment as a conductor, composer, teacher, and critic. In the last capacity he contributed to The Leader, the influential periodical founded and edited by D. P. Moran (qv), which doubtless honed his strongly nationalist views. These found further expression in his creation, in 1902, and subsequent direction of the Oireachtas Choir, an organ of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge), and in his addition of the fashionable patronymic prefix to his name.
Active in Conradh na Gaeilge, O'Dwyer was sympathetic with the aims of the broad cultural movement known as the Gaelic Revival and he became a leading voice in the drive to establish a distinctive and even insular school of Irish composition. His principal work, the opera Eithne, was written for the Oireachtas festival of 1909 and staged in the Rotunda in Dublin. With a libretto by the Rev. Thomas O'Kelly (1879–1924) of Sligo, it gained particular attention as the first opera to employ an Irish text; O'Kelly (who also employed the Gaelic version of his name, Tomás Ó Ceallaigh) hailed from Co. Sligo and had earlier supplied the first translation of Cathleen ni Houlihan by W. B. Yeats (qv). Consciously intended as an Irish grand opera, Eithne contains no spoken dialogue. It was produced again in 1910, at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, with the Limerick-born tenor Joseph O'Mara (qv) in the leading role. Largely on the strength of the popular reaction to the opera, O'Dwyer was appointed in 1914 to the chair of Irish music at UCD, a part-time post sponsored by Dublin corporation. He held this appointment until his retirement in 1939.
O'Dwyer's creative output was small and he is best remembered for his outspoken advocacy and championship of a distinctive indigenous musical expression. Consistent with this view, he made various arrangements of Irish music for the choir of the Gaelic League. Certain of his papers are in the UCD archives. He died 6 January 1949 in Dublin.