Hall, Dibben, Ingólfsson & Mitchell/Sounds Icelandic, 4. Jón Leifs and the Origins of an Icelandic Style

Jón Leifs (1899–1968) has in recent decades been recognized as one of Iceland’s leading composers in the twentieth century. His works are heard with increasing frequency on the international concert scene, and much of his oeuvre has now been released on CD—the Swedish label BIS has a complete series in progress. Leifs was a pivotal figure in Icelandic music history. He was the first composer to fashion a specifically ‘Icelandic’ sound derived from the elements of Icelandic folk songs, and he also drew inspiration from the country’s landscape, literature, and history. His music was met with skepticism in a local music scene still dominated by 19th-century Romanticism, and his abrasive personality won him few friends. His music remained largely neglected during his lifetime and some of his largest works remained unperformed. Research on Leifs and his works has also been scarce: a biography by the Swedish Carl-Gunnar Åhlén was published in 1999, and another by the present author in 2009 (an English version of which is forthcoming); prior to this, the only serious work on Leifs was Hjálmar H. Ragnarsson’s 1980 MFA-thesis, and even shorter articles on Leifs are scarce (the most perceptive ones are Pickard 1999 and Rickards 1992). The aim of this article is to elucidate how Leifs, at the very beginning of his career, developed his musical idiom from his exposure to the Icelandic folk traditions, and how this music drew a partly negative response from leading Icelandic composers and critics.