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Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī
(b Baghdad, July 779; d Samarra’, July 839). Arab musician. He was a son of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdī and a Persian slave at court called Shikla. He became famous for his fine and powerful voice with its range of four octaves, and first took part in court concerts during the reigns of Hārūn al-Rashīd (786–809) and al-Amīn (809–13). Proclaimed caliph in 817 in opposition to al-Ma’mūn (813–33), he had to abdicate after barely two years and went into hiding. In 825 he was pardoned and became a court musician once more under al-Ma’mūn and his successor al-Mu‘tasim (833–42). He was a follower of the school of Ibn Jāmi‘ and represented a ‘soft’ style, probably influenced by Persian music, which also allowed freedom in rendering older works. His rival Ishāq al-Mawsilī accused him of stylistic uncertainty; fragments of their polemic writings are quoted in the Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr (‘Great book of songs’) of al-Isfahānī, and their disputes on questions of musical theory were recorded in a lost treatise by ‘Alī ibn Hārūn ibn al-Munajjim (d 963). Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī’s Kitāb fī l-aghānī (‘Book of songs’) and a collection of his own songs, as well as biographical writings by his son, Hibat Allāh, and by his secretary, Ibn al-Dāya, survive in fragments in al-Isfahānī. He may have written a further musical work with ‘Amr ibn Bāna. Shortly before his death he renounced music and wine on religious grounds.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EI2
C. Barbier de Meynard: ‘Ibrahim, fils de Mehdi’, Journal asiatique, 6th ser., xiii (1869), 201–342
H.G. Farmer: A History of Arabian Music (London, 1929/R), 119ff
H.M. Leon: ‘The Poet Prince Who Became Khalifah’, Islamic Culture, iii (1929), 249–72
M. Husāmī: Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī (Beirut, 1961) [in Arabic]
J.E. Bencheikh: ‘Les musiciens et la poésie: les écoles d’Ishāq al-Mawsilī (m. 235 H.) et d’Ibrāhīm Ibn al-Mahdī (m. 224 H.)’, Arabica, xxii (1975), 114–52
G.D. Sawa: Music Performance Practice in the Early ‘Abbāsid Era 132–320 AH/750–932 AD (Toronto, 1989)
ECKHARD NEUBAUER
Ibsen, Henrik
(b Skien, 20 March 1828; d Christiania [now Oslo], 23 May 1906). Norwegian dramatist. He is generally regarded as the father of modern prose drama, with such plays as A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1882) and Hedda Gabler (1891). His early verse plays, written in the 1850s, attracted opera composers at the turn of the century – for instance, Stenhammar (Gildet på Solhaug, 1892–3) and Karel Moor (Hjördis, 1899). The subjects of these plays are epic and patriotic, evoking Norway’s greatness during the Viking and medieval periods; and Ibsen’s use of the Volsung-Saga in Haermaendena på Helgeland (‘The Vikings at Helgeland’ 1858) clearly aligns the play with a Wagnerian tradition. His later and more innovatory work had less appeal for composers, though the revolutionary Brand (1866) leaves its mark on d’Indy’s L’étranger; and Mark Brunswick’s opera The Master Builder (1959–67) is based on Ibsen’s 1892 play of the same name. In the latter part of the 20th century Hedda Gabler inspired settings by Robert Ward (1973) and Edward Harper (1985).
Ibsen had little feeling for music, although he made some early attempts at opera criticism, in which he expressed strong views on librettos (and wrote a verse parody of Bellini’s Norma). His attempt in 1861 to rewrite his Olaf Liljenkraus (1857) for the operatic stage was abandoned (the play was later turned into a very successful opera by Arne Eggen in 1940), and he turned down a request for a libretto from Grieg, who had written music for his play Peer Gynt in 1876.
WORKS -
Gildet på Solhaug [The Feast at Solhaug] (verse play, 1856): Stenhammar, 1899
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Olaf Liljekrans (play, 1857): A. Eggen, 1940
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Haermaendena på Helgeland [The Vikings at Helgeland] (play, 1858): Moor, 1905, as Hjördis
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Brand (play, 1866): d’Indy, 1903, as L’étranger
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Peer Gynt (play, 1867): L. Heward, 1922, inc.; V. Ullmann, 1928, inc., Egk, 1938
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Hedda Gabler (play, 1891): Ward, 1978, as Claudia Legare; Harper, 1985
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Bygmester Solness [The Master Builder] (play, 1892): M. Brunswick, 1959–67, inc.
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M. Meyer: Henrick Ibsen (London, 1967–71)
J. Williamson: ‘Pfitzner and Ibsen’, ML, lxvii (1986), 127–46
R.J. Andersen: ‘Edvard Grieg and Peer Gynt’, SMN, xix (1993), 221–8
J.G. Williamson: ‘Wolf and Pfitzner: from Song to Stage Music, from Stage Music to Song’, Hans Pfitzner und die musikalische Lyrik seiner Zeit: Bericht über das Symposion Hamburg 1989 (Tutzing, 1994), 132–45
ANTHONY PARR
Ibycus
(fl c535 bce). Greek poet. He left his native city of Rhegium in southern Italy to go to Samos at the invitation of its ruler Polycrates. The surviving fragments of his poetry show that he employed the style of choral lyric established more than a generation earlier by Stesichorus, and (the argument becomes less certain at this point) that he further imitated his predecessor by devoting himself to themes taken from mythology. As a court poet at Samos (see also Anacreon) he seems to have explicitly renounced myth for more personal subjects, powerfully expressed through natural imagery. One poem (Edmonds, poem 1) contrasts the gentle coming of love in youth with its unseasonable, shattering onslaught upon the poet. Together with a comparable shorter fragment (Edmonds, frag.2), it is reminiscent of the passionate Aeolic monody of Sappho and Alcaeus; yet both poems use choral metres. Although the strongly marked changes of emotional tone might appear to have demanded a shift in modality, Stesichorus had employed Phrygian for extremes of mood even more sharply opposed. The statement in Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusae, 162) that Ibycus, Alcaeus and Anacreon ‘spiced’ the harmonia is deliberately frivolous; its meaning remains obscure.
There is little reason to take seriously the assertion by later writers that Ibycus invented the sambukē, a type of harp that is still occasionally confused with the lyre (see Bowra), or other claims which involve the bukanē, a spiral trumpet. Apparently all of these associations originated from the accident of mere formal similarity.
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: Lyra graeca, ii (London and Cambridge, MA, 1924, 2/1928/R), 78–119
D.L. Page, ed.: Poetae melici graeci (Oxford, 1962), 144–69
D.A. Campbell, ed. and trans.: Greek Lyric, iii (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1991), 208–93
BIBLIOGRAPHY
U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff: Sappho und Simonides (Berlin, 1913/R), 121–5
C.M. Bowra: Greek Lyric Poetry from Alcman to Simonides (Oxford, 1936, 2/1961), 241–67
W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 78–81
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN
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