Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

Isbin, Sharon

(b Minneapolis, MN, 7 Aug 1956). American guitarist. She studied the guitar with Jeffrey Van in Minneapolis, and while at Yale University she was coached by Rosalyn Tureck. She also studied with Oscar Ghiglia, Alirio Diaz and Segovia. She won first prizes at the Toronto International Guitar Competition (1975), the Munich International Competition (1976), and the Queen Sofia competition in Madrid (1979). Her New York début was at Alice Tully Hall in 1979, following débuts in London (1977) and Tokyo (1978). She taught at the Manhattan School of Music, 1979–89, and in 1989 founded the guitar department at the Juilliard School; she also teaches at the Aspen Music Festival. Isbin has established an international reputation as a recitalist and concerto soloist, and has toured South America, Japan and Israel as well as the USA and Europe. She has made many recordings, including a significant disc of American guitar concertos by Corigliano, Lukas Foss and Joseph Schwantner, all of which were written for her. She has contributed many articles on the guitar, and together with Rosalyn Tureck has published an edition for guitar of the Bach lute suites.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

L. Koplewitz: ‘An American Guitar Concerto is Born: Interviews with Sharon Isbin and Lukas Foss’, Guitar Review, no.80 (1990), 1–4

J. Lehmann-Haupt: ‘American Tunes: Sharon Isbin and Three Leading Composers Breathe New Life into the Guitar Concerto’, Acoustic Guitar, vi/9 (1995–6), 64–9

THOMAS F. HECK

ISCM.

See International Society for Contemporary Music.

Iseler, Elmer

(b Port Colborne, ON, 14 Oct 1927; d Caledon, ON, 3 April 1998). Canadian conductor, teacher and editor. The founder, in 1955, of the Festival Singers of Canada, he conducted this choir in recitals and workshops throughout Canada and in the USA and Europe, and contributed greatly to Canadian choral singing. His appointment as conductor of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir in 1963 enabled him to work full time in this field. In 1972 he appeared with his choirs at the BBC Promenade Concerts and elsewhere in Europe. In 1978 he left the Festival Singers of Canada and founded the Elmer Iseler Singers, a group which rose to prominence in Canada. In 1997 he left the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir but continued to lecture extensively on choral music. A staunch supporter of Canadian composers, he also performed a great deal of other 20th-century music.

GILES BRYANT

Iselin, Ludwig

(b Basle, 2 July 1559; d Basle, 20 Dec 1612). Swiss lutenist. He was the son of the Basle lawyer Ulrich Iselin and Faustina Amerbach, daughter of Bonifacius Amerbach. From 1574 he studied at universities in Basle, Geneva, Bourges and Padua. He received the doctorate of law from Basle on 20 May 1589 and was subsequently appointed professor there. During his early student years he copied two songbooks of German lieder, odes and motets (CH-Bu F.X.21 and F.X.25–6) and compiled two lutebooks in German tablature (Bu F.IX.23, dated 24 November 1575; F.X.11), the first with a section of elementary lute instruction and the second with advice on some finer aspects of lute playing, including instructions for tuning two or three lutes of different sizes for simultaneous performance. The books are particularly interesting as they contain pieces popular among students at that time. Apart from a few sacred and secular German songs, they are mostly dances: German and court dances with Nachtänze, passamezzos with saltarellos, galliards, and so on. The titles of many of them indicate vocal origins; others bear such descriptive nicknames as Studenten Tantz, Künigstantz, Des Printzen Tantz and Strasburger Tantz. The songs and dances are both set in chordal fashion with moderate embellishment. Iselin probably copied the pieces from other lutebooks, although he may have intabulated a few himself.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

K. Nef: ‘Die Musik in Basel von den Anfängen im 9. bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, SIMG, x (1908–9), 532–63, esp. 544

J. Dieckmann: Die in deutscher Lautentabulatur überlieferten Tänze des 16. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1931)

A. Pellanda-Weber: Die Lautentabulatur des Ludwig Iselin: eine kritische Übertragung der Lautentabulatur Basel U.B. Ms. F.IX.23 (diss., U. of Fribourg, 1972)

J. Kmetz: Die Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Basel: Katalog der Musikhandschriften des 16. Jahrhunderts (Basel, 1988), 84–8, 272–6, 296–310, 317–22

J. Kmetz: The Sixteenth-Century Basel Songbooks: Origins, Contents and Contexts (Bern, 1995), esp. 12

HANS RADKE/JOHN KMETZ

Iselin Liederbuch

(CH-Bu F.X.21). See Sources, MS, §IX, 7.

Isfahānī, al- [Abū’ l-Faraj ‘Alī ibn al-Husayn]

(b Isfahan, 897; d Baghdad, 967). Arab man of letters, historian and poet. He lived in Baghdad and in Aleppo. As a writer on music he belongs to the school of Ishāq al-mawsilī (see Mawsilī, al-, (2)), whose Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr (‘Great book of songs’) was the main source for al-Isfahānī’s principal work of the same name, which is said to have taken him 50 years to write. This comprehensive book covers Arab cultural history from pre-Islamic times to the early Abbasids, with emphasis on poetry and music. Its latest published edition comprises 24 volumes. Its arrangement follows that of Al-mi’at al-sawt al-mukhtāra (‘The 100 selected songs’) compiled by Ishāq's father, Ibrāhīm al-Mawsilī (see Mawsilī, al-, (1)) and others, which was accessible to al-Isfahānī in the edition of ‘Alī ibn Yahyā al-Munajjim (d 888), a pupil of Ishāq al-Mawsilī. The texts of the songs are accompanied by notes on the compositions and their melodic (nagham) and metrical modes (īqā‘). Each of the main song texts is followed by the biography of a poet or musician often with an historical excursus; almost 100 musicians and singers from the late 6th century to the 9th are treated in this way (Shiloah, 1979). The detailed biographical data of Ibrāhīm and Ishāq al-Mawsilī alone convey a lively and convincing picture of the status of court musicians in Baghdad between c775 and 850. Soon after its completion the book was so renowned that Caliph al-Hakam II (961–76) of Córdoba sent al-Isfahānī 1000 gold dinars with a request for a copy. It is still the vital source for descriptions of early Arab musical history. His other books on music and musicians are lost. A monograph on slave musicians (Kitāb al-ghilmān al-mughannīn) was still known in Aleppo in the 13th century. Quotations from a book on female slave singers (Kitāb al-imā’) have survived in the section on musicians (volume x) of the encyclopedic Masālik al-absār by Ibn Fadl Allāh al-‘Umarī (d 1349). Abū l-Faraj himself quotes, in the Kitāb al-aghānī (viii, pp.374f), a treatise he wrote to explain the ‘basic rules of notes’ (Risāla fī ‘ilal al-nagham) as understood by Ishāq al-Mawsilī and his school.

WRITINGS

Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr [Great book of songs]; pubd (Cairo, 1868–9, suppl., Leiden, 1888, 2/1905–6, 3/1927–74); part Fr. trans. in Quatremère and Caussin de Perceval

BIBLIOGRAPHY

EI2 (M. Nallino)

E.M. Quatremère: ‘Mémoire sur l’ouvrage intitulé Kitab al-agâni, c’est-à-dire “Recueil de chansons”’, Nouveau journal asiatique, 2nd ser., xvi (1835), 385–419, 497–545; Journal asiatique, 3rd ser., vi (1838), 465–526

A.P. Caussin de Perceval: ‘Notices anecdotiques sur les principaux musiciens arabes des trois premiers siècles de l’islamisme’, Journal asiatique, 7th ser., ii (1873), 397–592

H.G. Farmer: ‘The Song Captions in the Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr’, Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society, xv (1955), 1–10

M. Stigelbauer: Die Sängerinnen am Abbasidenhof um die Zeit des Kalifen al-Mutawakkil (Vienna, 1975)

Gh.‘A. Khashaba: Kitāb al-mūjaz fī sharh mustalahāt al-Aghānī [Compendium of the musical terms in the Kitāb al-aghānī] (Cairo, 1979)

A. Shiloah: The Theory of Music in Arabic Writings (c.900–1900): Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Libraries of Europe and the USA (Munich, 1979), 234–37

Sh. Jabrī: Abū’ l-Faraj al-Isfahānī (Cairo, 4/1980)

G.D. Sawa: ‘Musical Humour in the Kitāb al-Aghānī’, Logos Islamikos: Studia Islamica in honorem G.M. Wickens (Toronto, 1984), 35–50

G.D. Sawa: ‘The Status and Roles of the Secular Musicians in the Kitāb al-Aghānī (Book of Songs) of Abū al-Faraj al-Isbahānī (d. 356 A.H./967 A.D.)’, AsM, xvii (1985), 69–82

Kh. al-‘Atiyya, comp.: al-Qiyān: Abū’ l-Faraj al-Isfahānī (London, 1989)

G.D. Sawa: Music Performance Practice in the Early ‘Abbāsid Era 132–320 AH/750–932 AD (Toronto, 1989)

H. Kilpatrick: ‘Context and the Enhancement of the Meaning of ahbār in the Kitāb al-aġānī’, Arabica, xxxviii (1991), 351–68

ECKHARD NEUBAUER