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Árni Heimir Ingólfsson , "Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland" (Indiana UP, 2019)
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Arnie Heimir
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Ari Barbalat
Hello, welcome to the New Books in History channel of the New Books Network podcast. I am your host, Ari Barbalat. Today I'm honored to engage in dialogue with Arnie Hamir in Gulf Sun. He is a senior researcher at the Reykjavik Academy. We will discuss his recently published book Yon and the Musical Invention of Iceland, published in Bloomington, Indiana by Indiana University Press, 2019. Arnie, it's an honor to be in dialogue with you today.
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Arnie Heimir
Thank you. Likewise.
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Ari Barbalat
To begin, please kindly tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? What formative events in your life catalyzed the researcher you would later become?
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Arnie Heimir
Well, I'm born and raised in Reykjavik, Iceland. I went to school here and studied music. I started taking piano lessons when I was about six or seven and gradually became more and more interested as I sort of went into my teenage years in music and not just playing, but I was also always very curious in the history and the background of the music that I was studying. And gradually I started reading more music history books and things like that. And I I realized that while I I really liked playing piano and all of that, that maybe music history was a path that would be even more fulfilling for me. And so after high school here in Iceland, I I decided to go to the US to study. I had actually been there a couple of times for summer music camps. I went to a place called Interlochen in Michigan. And so I knew a little bit about the American university system and what was being offered and what you had to do to get accepted and things like that. So I applied to Oberlin, the Oberlin Conservatory, Oberlin College in Ohio, and got in as a basically a double music major, which meant that I could do a. A degree both in piano performance and music history. So that was sort of my. My first step towards becoming a musicologist. And then after that I went to Harvard for a Master's and a PhD in musicology. And then after that I moved back to Iceland and I've been teaching and doing research and administration and all kinds of things here ever since. That was in 2002. So I've been here for more than 20 years now and basically focusing on the music history of Iceland, researching and writing about Icelandic music history from basically the Middle Ages until today.
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Ari Barbalat
What inspired you to prepare this book? What message do you hope to convey to readers?
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Arnie Heimir
Well, I've been fascinated by the story of Jon Leifs, who was basically Iceland's first important classical music composer for a very long time. I mean, we'll get back to this later, I'm sure. But ever since I was a teenager, I've really found his music and his story really compelling for all kinds of reasons. I mean, there's the music, there's this character that is in some ways quite difficult. I mean, you want to like him, you really do, but he's a complex figure, has all kinds of contradictions inside him that make him really compelling. And his historical situation is so interesting because he's basically the first really sort of ambitious composer that Iceland gets who wants to, in his music, sort of create a sense of national identity, wants to create a specifically Icelandic kind of music, and no one had tried to do that before. And at the same time, he's sort of a modernist. I mean, he really wants to bring new music to Iceland, and people were very skeptical of that. And at the same time, he's a pioneer in all kinds of things, like setting up the Federation of Icelandic Artists, the Icelandic Composers association, the Society for Performing Rights. He is a pioneer in all kinds of ways, in addition to his music being really interesting and compelling in many different ways. And so I basically found that, you know, here's this underrated and under researched composer who just really deserves a biography or a study of his life and works and So I basically wrote this book in 2009 in Icelandic. It was published here first, and then 10 years later it was. It was published in the US in a somewhat modified version. So I'm. I'm very pleased that I was able to. To tell this story of really how Icelandic music, which is flourishing now in all kinds of different fields and genres, how Icelandic music really started, how it. How it began. It's. It all starts with. With this really unusual figure of Young Lich's.
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Ari Barbalat
What are the primary themes in your book? What story and stories does your book tell?
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Arnie Heimir
Well, I mean, basically it's sort of a biography. I hope it's more than that. I hope it's also sort of a cultural history of Iceland's cultural situation in the 20th century, particularly as it relates to music. So Iceland until the early 20th century was under Danish rule. So it was part of the kingdom of Denmark. And Denmark's king was also the king of Iceland. And Starting in the second half of the 19th century, there was an increasing push towards independence in Iceland that people wanted, you know, to. To control their own destinies and have a say in. In their own matters. And so in 1918, Iceland becomes independent from the state of Denmark, but still has the same king as Denmark. And then in 1944, which is during the Second World War, Iceland unilaterally decided to cut the ties with the king of Denmark and proclaim an independent republic. And so in Iceland, the question becomes, how do we, now that we are independent, how do we create a sense of national identity and some sort of cultural identity and the cultural institutions that we need? And Leifs was one of the people that contributed to this. He in some ways was unsuccessful because he was difficult to work with. And he was a sort of. He was as a personality, not everyone got along with him. So he wasn't able to really create all of the things in Iceland that he wanted to do. But as a composer he is. He is tremendously important because he stuck. Studied Icelandic folk music, which was sort of looked down on in those days. People felt like having such a short tradition of classical music meant that we really had to catch up with, you know, playing Mozart and Beethoven and all of that, and that the folk songs that people had been singing here for centuries, that they were sort of second or third rate and that we should really just forget about them and start doing things the proper way, if you will. And so Leifs was really unique in that he realized the value of folk song and he went and collected it, he recorded it on these primitive sort of wax cylinder machines that you had back in. Back in the 1920s to record folk songs and then used that basically to create a musical language. And no one had ever done that before. So this is a story of a person in a specific cultural environment where, you know, Iceland is becoming a nation. And he is sort of responding to this yearning that he feels within himself to reflect Iceland musically, to create Iceland in his own music. And that is. That is really a fascinating story, I think.
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Ari Barbalat
Can you describe Jan Leif's birth, upbringing in early years?
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Arnie Heimir
Yeah, he was born in Iceland in 1899. And at as a young child, he moves with his parents to Reykjavik, which is the capital it was then only a very small town, and grows up there and gradually, as a teenager, decides that he wants to study music and wants to become a musician, which was almost unheard of in Iceland at the time. And after attending an organ recital by a young Icelander who was a few years older than Leifs, called Pautl Isolfsson, he decided to go to Germany, where Isolfsson was also studying, and to try to get into a conservatory there. So the two of them, Isolsshon and Leifs, go to Leipzig in Germany together in 1916. And Leifs attends the Leipzig Conservatory, studies there for five years, graduates in 1921, by which time he had fallen in love with a fellow student there, a German pianist called Annie Riethoff. And they get married in 1921 and stay in Germany and have two daughters. One was called Snowd, the younger one was called Leif, and try to establish a career there. That took a while because there were very few opportunities. Of course, in the early and mid-1920s, Germany is going through a terrible time economically. And for a foreign musician to try to get a job when there was so much unemployment and even German musicians, musicians were out of work was very difficult. So they go through an incredibly difficult time. But during the 1920s, he's sort of figuring out, well, what is Icelandic music, What do these folk songs sound like and how can I use them to create a musical language that no one has heard before? And so he spends the 1920s sort of trying to figure this out. At the same time, he's doing all kinds of really interesting things. He's the first. He's responsible for the first performances in Iceland by a full symphony orchestra, because in 1926 he managed to get the Hamburg Philharmonic, which is a great orchestra, to tour Iceland. So they came here and gave 14 concerts, I think, in 15 days, and basically introduced a lot of the classical repertoire to Icelandic audiences for the first time. So he was really invested in bringing musical culture to Iceland and at the same time making sure that Iceland had a voice of its own, musically speaking. So that was, I think, tremendously important for him.
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Ari Barbalat
Can you tell us about the poetry used by Jan Leifs in his compositions?
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Arnie Heimir
Yes, there are a few elements of Leifz's music that I think are particularly important. And one of them is the poetry that he uses because Iceland was sort of unusual, I guess, in the regard that while so many art forms were, let's say, not fully flourishing in Iceland in the early 20th century, let's say theater, music, visual arts, Icelandic literature has a really long and interesting history going back to the Middle Ages. So we have these things called the Icelandic Sagas, which are sort of like novels about all kinds of family dramas and tensions and things like that. And then we have poetry, including what's called eddic poetry or the Eddas, which is really fascinating medieval poetry. So Iclund had this really rich tradition of literature and not such a great tradition of music. And so what Leifs does was he uses the literature as inspiration and he sets a lot of Icelandic poetry from the Middle Ages. And his largest work, his magnum opus, if you will, the work that consumed him for a large part of his life, is an oratorio called Edda, Edda being the name of this famous collection of medieval Icelandic poetry. And he conceived this, interestingly, as a four evening composition. So it's basically four huge parts, each of which takes about two hours to perform. And he saw this as his answer to, if you will, Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, which is also based on partly Icelandic mythology and Icelandic medieval literature and is one of the great works of 19th century opera and German music in the 19th century. But he felt like Wagner was sort of misrepresenting the Nordic spirit, if you will, in that work. So he wanted to sort of give the Icelandic answer to that. There are also some very interesting smaller vocal works, and then also a huge symphonic piece called the Saga Symphony, which is not vocal. He's not using actual text, but he is depicting through his music characters from the Icelandic medieval sagas. And one of the things that's interesting about this music is he's quite modern in the way that he conceives of, I guess you could say, his sound world. He uses a lot of percussion and a lot of really unusual percussion like stones and anvils and sirens, and especially when he's depicting these medieval battles that these sagas talk about where, you know, hundreds of people are fighting in the 12th or the 13th century and there's a lot of noise going on. And so they sound really quite modern, but at the same time they are inspired by literature and stories from the Middle Ages. So there's that sort of tension in his work that I find really interesting. But so poetry for Leifs was really crucial because it sort of. It was the only way in which iceland until the 20th century had really produced something outstanding in the arts in an international sense. There was nothing musically that could compare to the medieval sagas and poems. And I guess what Leifs wanted to do in his music was to create something that, that could stand on the same level, I guess. And so that was his life's work, I suppose.
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Ari Barbalat
How does Leifs portray Icelandic nature in his music?
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Arnie Heimir
Icelandic nature is. Is one of the other things that was very important to Leifs. There's literature and then there's nature. As another really fundamental component of his music, he was very preoccupied with, I guess, sort of depicting the essence of Iceland, which included for him these, on the one hand, these vast expanses of just fields or tundra sort of going all the way to the horizon. And then on the other hand, what I guess you could call the violent aspect of Icelandic nature, which is especially volcanic eruptions and waterfalls and things like that. And so he both very explicitly in his music and also in more subtle ways, was using nature, I guess, as a source of inspiration. The most obvious cases are four orchestral tone poems that he wrote in the early 1960s where he specifically depicts one phenomenon of Icelandic nature. So there's a piece called Geyser, which is about a geyser, a hot spring that erupts, and Hekla, which is a volcano. And so you have these pieces that grow from a very quiet opening and then gradually become more violent and more dramatic and with immense percussion. And Inhekla, he uses a choir also. There's a piece called Detifoss, which is Iceland's largest waterfall. He also uses a choir there as well as a large orchestra. But he also sort of more generally, I guess, was inspired by, I guess, the, what you would call the sublime element of Icelandic nature. This sort of awe inspiring feeling that you have when faced with something as tremendous. And in this way, I guess as well, he's. I mean, he is a modern composer in many ways, but he's also a nationalist who is inspired by nature. You could compare some of these nature works to pieces like Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony, for example. So in a sense there's a very interesting tension between, I guess, the modern and the Romantic in Leifs because he is inspired by the same kinds of things that Romantic composers were inspired by. The sort of national heritage and nature being elements that could inspire you to create sublime works of art.
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Ari Barbalat
How did admirers of Jan Leifs respond to his work? How did critics of Jan Leifs respond to his work?
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Arnie Heimir
Well, in Iceland, Leifs had, let's say, more critics than admirers for most of his career because Icelanders thought this music was very strange. They weren't used to modern music at all. The few composers that Iceland had before Leifs had all composed in very traditional styles and were sort of influenced by, let's say, Schumann or Mendelssohn and things like that. So Leif's sort of came crashing in like a. Like a meteor in the Icelandic musical scene. And so people weren't really ready for that. And he. He was. He was criticized a lot for. For his music. People just really didn't understand it at all. So he had. He had few admirers, but. But they were very loyal and. And did a lot to support his music. But. But overall in Iceland, I would say he was. He was Iceland's great misunderstood composer for most of the 20th century. And it took until the very end of the 20th century for a revival to happen or sort of a reappreciation of Leifs. And that happened sort of at the time when I was a teenager, there was a film about not his whole life, but his. His career in. In Germany called Tears of Stone, which came out in, I think, 1995. That was a huge influence also on me because I was in. I was in college at the time and was completely blown away by this movie. And at the same time, more of his works were being performed, et cetera, et cetera, and recorded as well. And so his reappreciation didn't really happen until the 1990s and early 2000s. And while he was alive, he was often harshly criticized as a composer in Iceland. The reception in Germany was a little bit more complex, and I guess we'll get to that soon. But in Iceland, there were many people against him and somewhat fewer people that were rooting for him.
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Arnie Heimir
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Ari Barbalat
What was the trajectory of Leafs career in Nazi Germany?
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Arnie Heimir
That's a really interesting and somewhat complex issue that I tried to to deal with in the book. Because in many ways Leifs should have been the poster child for music in Nazi Germany for the Nazis, because he he being from Iceland, which was a country that the Nazis sort of in a way idealized, it was this far north. The idea of the purity of the, you know, Vikings, the medieval sense of, of that sort of having been preserved there for a really long time. But at the same time, his music was just much too modern and dissonant and far out there for the Nazis to really like it. So there's a sort of dissonance there as far as that's concerned. For a while after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Leif's music was performed more often than it had been before. And to some extent he tried to seek some kind of accommodation with the Nazi regime. I mean, he was living in Berlin with his wife. His wife. I don't think I mentioned this before, but Annie Leifs was Jewish. She was born to Jewish parents. And so that obviously complicated his situation a lot in Nazi Germany. But for a while it seemed like the Nazis were willing to entertain some kind of relationship with him. His music was performed by leading orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic. They played his iceland Overture in 1935 and gave a concert that had only works by Leifs and Richard Wagner in 1936. And in 1933, which was the year the Nazis came to power, Leif also got his first publishing contract in Germany. So his music was being published more. So for a while he enjoyed, let's say, a modicum of success. He was also invited to take part in other kinds of ventures that were organized by the Nazis. There was this thing called the Permanent Council on International Cooperation, which was sort of the Nazis response to another organization called iscm, the International Society for Contemporary Music, which the Nazis felt was promoting music that was much too modern and much too radical. And they wanted things to be more traditional. And so they started their own council of composers from different countries that were sort of promoting international cooperation. And Leif's was part of this council as Iceland's representative. So he's sort of engaging with Nazi bureaucracy on a couple of different levels and is moderately successful until about 1937. And it's hard to say exactly what happened. We don't have any exact records of this coming from, let's say, Nazi bureaucracy. But his music was performed less often after that. And when it was performed, it was fairly poorly received. There was a big scandal in Berlin in 1941 when Leifz's organ concerto was performed by the Berlin Philharmonic. And Leifs himself was conducting. So this was a huge opportunity for him, or it should have been a huge opportunity for him. And during the performance. And the organ concerto that Leifs had written a few years earlier is one of his most dissonant works. It is definitely not the work that anyone should have chosen of Leif's to be performed in Nazi Germany in 1941. And so not unexpectedly, it was a huge scandal and people walked out, almost the entire audience walked out during the performance of that work. And they got terrible reviews. And basically that was the end of his career in Germany. So it's a complex situation that basically ends in his defeat. His music was no longer performed. He lived in increasing isolation. And in 1944 he was finally allowed to leave Germany along with his wife and two daughters. And it's clear that really the only thing that saved Annie, Leif, his wife and their two daughters, that they were able to stay in Germany for such a long time into the Second World War, was the fact that they had Icelandic passports. Because although the Nazis obviously did terrible things to German Jews, they were less inclined to, let's say, arrest Jews that were foreign citizens. So this, this helped them a lot. But so this is a. A somewhat complicated situation, of course, in Iceland. At the same time there are. There are things going on as well. ICELAND was in 1940 occupied by British troops. And this is something that also sort of influences the whole situation. Earlier in 1940, Denmark and Norway had been occupied by the Nazis. And so there was sort of growing, let's say, concern amongst the Allied forces that given Iceland's extremely strategic situation in the middle of the North Atlantic, that Iceland might be next on the Nazis list of countries to occupy. So the British come here in May 1940, and the Icelandic government basically accepts that they sort of maintain their neutrality as a formality, but basically everyone was Obviously very happy that the British got here before the Germans did. And during the war, of course, there was always the danger, and there were many lives lost. I mean, the Nazi submarines did terrible damage to many Icelandic ships, for example. There were many, many Icelanders killed due to that. And one of the things that Lif Sid, which came back to haunt him later in life, was that the Germans asked him to collaborate with them on radio broadcasts to Iceland during the war. And he didn't agree to be the main organizer of these radio broadcasts, but he did occasionally give speeches that were broadcast to Iceland. And Leifs always maintained that these were only the. These were not Nazi propaganda. And I think he was correct in saying that, that they were only intended to sort of. That they were intended to encourage Icelanders during these difficult times. But obviously, you know, taking part in radio broadcasts that were sort of sponsored by the Nazis was in a little bit of a gray area. So. So this was a complicated situation. At the same time, Iceland's government was turning away Jewish applicants for asylum here. I mean, it's something that I talk about more in my most recent book, which is called Music at World's End, how Iceland's xenophobic Prime Minister Herman Jonason, turned away lots of Jews in the years leading up to the Second World War. Obviously, no one in Iceland at that time knew about the Holocaust. I mean, that was something that only became common knowledge much later during the war. But. So there's a complicated situation here of Leif's being, for a large part of the war still in Germany while Iceland is occupied by the Allied forces. And the dynamics of that and Leif's participation and to some degree, seeking collaboration with the Nazi authorities was something that would definitely come back to haunt him after the war.
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Ari Barbalat
Can you tell us about the Leif's family's arrival in Stockholm, Sweden?
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Arnie Heimir
Yes. So they were finally. They had been trying to basically get out of Germany for quite a while. And in 1944, they finally get the paperwork in order. They're allowed to go to Stockholm, which is a neutral country during the war. So they're able to go there. And they get there in 1944, and soon afterwards, Leif decides to divorce his wife. So he seeks a divorce from Annie. This is something that really devastates Annie and the two daughters as well. It has a very negative impact on his relationship with his daughters because they oppose this decision as well. So there's a very tense personal situation that is developing at that time. And then after the war, in 1945, he returns to Iceland. This is a very difficult time for him. And especially a few Years later, in 1947, his younger daughter, Leif, she drowned in Sweden. She was swimming off the coast of Sweden. She was taking part in a music course during the summer, and she went into the sea for a swim and did not return. And she was 17 years old at the time. And this was a huge shock for Lif. This was basically the biggest, I think, personal shock of his lifetime. And especially because he, to some extent, felt guilty for having abandoned his wife and daughters in Stockholm, divorcing his wife and going back to Iceland. And the question of whether his daughter had intentionally drowned herself was something that haunted him, I think, for the rest of his life. And he composed four works in her memory that are dedicated to her, and that sort of deal with the whole topic of death and all kinds of emotions of grief and pain and guilt that are expressed in these works. And I still think they're among his finest. And especially a piece called Requiem, which he wrote just a few weeks after her death in 1947 for Acapella Choir, is just incredibly beautiful. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous piece of music. So simple in the way it's set up and yet so profoundly moving. But this was a very difficult time for him. He later remarried, actually. He remarried and then divorced a Swedish woman and then married for the third time in Iceland and sort of gradually claimed his place, I guess you could say, in Icelandic musical life. It was difficult for him because obviously he'd been living in Germany for such a long time, for decades, and then returning to Iceland after the war, trying to sort of find his place within the community still with this sort of shadow hanging over him of, you know, what exactly his place during the Nazi period was and all of that. But he did an awful lot for Icelandic composers during this time. Soon after he arrived in Iceland, he starts the Icelandic Composer Society, which was the first. I mean, the whole idea of there being more than just a handful of composers in Iceland was new at the time. And so he starts doing all these things to sort of create a community for people who are doing composing as a career, and also starts the Performing Rights Society. And that he was also very controversial for his work there because he was very determined, let's say, that people and. And companies and. And everyone pay the. The proper dues for using music that was still in copyright. And people in Iceland thought that was completely absurd at the time. And so that was. That was another difficult fight that he. That he took on for. For musicians In. In Iceland. But gradually he. He sort of was able to. To create a new life for himself in Iceland and compose some of his most important works in Iceland. After the war, he wrote two more evenings of his big Edda oratorio. He composed the big nature pieces for orchestra, Geyser and Heckland and all of that. And so he had quite a good and interesting career in Iceland until his death in 1968.
- [37:44]
Ari Barbalat
How did Leifs go about rebuilding his career after he returned to Iceland?
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Arnie Heimir
Well, I think. I mean, like I said before, it was difficult for him because he was an outsider in so many ways. He also had this reputation of being not easy to work with, that he had a big temper and all of that. But I think the reason for his, I guess, success in really rebuilding his career after the war was that Iceland just really needed someone like him. Someone that was dedicated to not only composing music and being sort of, I guess, a spokesperson for Icelandic composers, but also just Icelandic artists in general. And so he took on these jobs and not always. He wasn't always liked for it. And some of the things he did were not so popular, I guess. But overall, I think looking back, it was incredibly important for Iceland to have someone like him at the time who was. Who was speaking out for new music, for the importance of composers being able to earn a living for their work, et cetera. So he was gradually able to. He wasn't. I don't think he was really able to after the war to make a living only from his compositions. I think his main job was as director of the Performing Rights Society. But he always kept on composing on the side, even when sometimes his works were sort of scorned and got terrible reviews, especially in some Nordic music festivals that were held after the war where some of his big pieces like the Saga Symphony were performed and got really awful reviews. But he kept going because he was so convinced himself of the necessity of doing what he was doing. I mean, he really had incredible faith in his mission in life, which was to create a new kind of Icelandic music. And he never really lost faith in that. And I think that's what kept him going even during the more difficult times of his career.
- [40:28]
Ari Barbalat
Can you tell us about Jan Leaf's personality traits and psychology? What would his therapist, his psychologist or his shrink say about him?
- [40:40]
Arnie Heimir
That's a good question. I'm not sure. I'm not a therapist or a psychologist myself, but it's very clear that. That he. He had some psychological issues, let's say. I mean, he was. He was not Easy to work with. He was so. He was so convinced of the necessity of what he was doing. It almost became like a compulsion. And the whole idea of. Of basically not just Iceland, but overall, I guess you could say the. The north, as opposed to the south, finally having its moment of glory in terms of artistic creation. I mean, this is something that also is a little bit suspicious because it goes back to all kinds of theories about race and culture that the Nazis also appropriated. But this whole idea of there being sort of a southern artistic mentality as opposed to a northern artistic mentality, this was very important to Leifz's whole sort of aesthetic ideal. And basically he felt like the south had dominated music and I guess, artistic creation overall for much too long. And, you know, in music, you know, the Italian opera and, you know, symphonies that come from, you know, the Austro German area, et cetera, et cetera. And he felt, okay, now the time has come for the north to dominate artistic creation and aesthetic creation. And he felt like the medieval culture of Iceland could be sort of like a beacon that would lead the way in this. And he was sort of obsessed by this whole idea. And I don't think it did him personally much good in terms of. Of sort of articulating what it was that he wanted to do with. With his music overall. And so it, in a way, it created more difficulties for him than anything else. And, and at the same time, he. You know, he's. He's a difficult husband, He's. He's a difficult father. He. He doesn't always treat the people next to him very well because he's just so obsessed with what he regards as his mission in life. And, you know, so whether. What. What exactly his psychologist would say, I'm. I'm not. I'm not so sure. But I think he realized this especially towards the end of his life. He realized himself and he was able to sort of work on his issues and I guess gain some kind of inner peace that he didn't have in his earlier years. But overall, he was a very complex character, and that's what makes him fascinating to study, but also a little bit overwhelming, I think. And I think that's one of the things that. That made this book, writing this book, both a really enjoyable exercise and often quite frustrating because you're dealing with a personality that isn't always the most sympathetic.
- [44:18]
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Arnie Heimir
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Arnie Heimir
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Arnie Heimir
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Arnie Heimir
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Ari Barbalat
Terms apply in your scholarly judgment. What are Jan Leif's most important musical compositions?
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Arnie Heimir
Well, I think his Requiem is definitely up there among his best works and most important compositions. The piece that he wrote after his daughter died. It's just so exquisitely well done using really simple means. I mean, it's really just sort of shifting from major to minor and back to major in the simplest of ways, but it's so incredibly beautiful. Also, there's a lullaby that he wrote, a song for voice and piano that he wrote when that same daughter was born in 1929. Also incredibly beautiful. There's an Iceland cantata that he wrote in 1930. He intended it for a composition. He intended it for a competition in Iceland that was being held in 1930 because Iceland was celebrating the millennial of the founding of the Icelandic Parliament. But he never submitted it because he sort of knew that he would never win. But it's a really impressive work as well. And obviously the big orchestral scores like Hekla and Gaezit, I mean, they're not something that I would necessarily put on my stereo every day, but they are incredibly impressive works and really demonstrate sort of the essence of his musical personality.
- [47:18]
Ari Barbalat
How did you first come to know about Leifs and his music?
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Arnie Heimir
I think I was probably about 13 or 14 when my piano teacher gave me a set of folk song arrangements by Leifs that I played more or less nothing but that for a whole summer. It's a set of 25 folk songs arranged for piano by him. And I was just really interested in the sound and the fact that, I mean, I'd never played Icelandic music before, I think, as a student. And so it was intriguing to me. And then when I was 15, I guess, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra gave a concert that was devoted to only Leifs's compositions. It was a concert held in. It must have been 1989. It was to celebrate what would have been his 90th birthday. And they played some of his big works. They played Geyser, they played Hakla. And I was just completely blown away. I had no idea that a composer from Iceland had ever written any music that sounded like that. And after that, I started, you know, reading more and trying to find out more about, well, who was this guy that wrote this sort of crazy but fascinating music. And this was right at the time, like I said earlier, where his music was starting to be sort of reassessed and performed more and studied more. And an Icelandic composer called Hjalmar Ragnarsson, who had written a master's thesis on Leifs from Cornell University, published some of his writings on him in the early 1990s. So I was just really getting caught up in this. And at the same time, when I was in high school here, my high school choir did some works of Leif's, like the Requiem. So I had also performed them in a sort of, you know, almost a semi professional sense. And then when I was at Oberlin and starting my senior year and I decided to write a sort of fairly big senior thesis there, I decided to write it about the Organ Concerto, which is the piece that caused this huge scandal in Berlin in 1941. And so that was sort of my introduction to Leif's scholarship. And then I worked on it sort of on and off for the next 10, 12 years. I think before, in 2000, I guess it was 2008 that I got the contract to write the book in Icelandic, and it came out in 2009.
- [49:58]
Ari Barbalat
What is your book's relationship to previous scholarship?
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Arnie Heimir
Well, in a sense, there hasn't been very much scholarship on Leifs or hadn't been. Before I started writing, there was this master's thesis by Ragnarsson that he turned into a really good article There was a biography that a Swedish musicologist had written that came out in 1999. But basically my aim in writing the book was really to create a comprehensive study of Leif's career, going through all the material to make his life and music accessible to a broad audience. And I think especially with the Icelandic version of the book that came out in 2009, I was very concerned that. That it was not just a specialist study, that it was readable by everyone, and that, you know, people, just a general audience could read it and find it enjoyable. And so that was sort of my. My aim in. In writing the. The Icelandic version of the book. When I sort of refashioned it for the English version, I guess my. My intended audience is somewhat different because it's a. And I sort of had in mind a more scholarly audience, I guess, for the English book. So in a sense, I had to rewrite a lot of it, especially the sort of musical, analytical portions of it. I rewrote them and made them sort of, I guess, put more meat on the bones, if you will, made it sort of more. More interesting for people who were more knowledgeable about music history, for example, and music theory.
- [51:48]
Ari Barbalat
What findings and discoveries surprised you most in your research process?
- [51:53]
Arnie Heimir
I guess what surprised me most was how much material there is that Leifs himself left to posterity, if you will. His collection at the Icelandic National Library is absolutely huge. He was a compulsive letter writer, and he kept all of his letters. I think it's something close to 7,000 letters that survive, as well as, obviously, the scores, sketches for the scores. He kept everything he kept, even if he was at a restaurant and jotted down on the backside of a menu, let's say, or a receipt. He jotted down two measures of music. He would. He would keep that. He kept everything. So just going through the. The material was an immense effort. It took me a few years, actually, sort of, you know, I was. I was doing other things at the same time, but it took a long time just to get the overview of what he did because he wrote so much letters, articles, all kinds of things. And so that was what. What surprised me was just how. How much material there was.
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Ari Barbalat
What were the most difficult aspects of your research and writing process? How did you overcome and circumvent those challenges?
- [53:18]
Arnie Heimir
Well, like I said, one of the most difficult aspects was just the volume of stuff that. There was another, I guess, difficult aspect was sort of trying to get the balance right between all the different elements that I wanted to portray. I mean, you know, there's the character. And on the one hand, you know, he's like we've talked about before, he's flawed. So you want to bring out obviously his flaws, but at the same time, you want to show, when he has a sympathetic side, you want to show that as well. To talk about his music in a way that is accessible, to talk about the cultural situation in Iceland at the beginning of the 20th century and how Leifs is attempting to be an agent in creating a national sense of national culture. So those were some challenges that I think presented themselves. Also the challenge of rewriting the book in English, that was something that I'd never done before at the time, and I guess at the time when the book came out In Iceland in 2009, I wasn't really thinking very much about it having a sort of future life in. In another language. I was just quite happy with it. It got really excellent reviews and the reception here was very good. But then I went on to do other things, but somehow it. It got noticed. I mean, Leifs was. People were curious enough about Leifs. Also in English speaking countries, let's say that people were aware that a biography had been published in language that no one could read. And Alex Ross, who is the music critic of the New Yorker, he wrote a little blurb in the New Yorker I sent because we know each other, and I sent him a copy when it came out. Even though I knew that he doesn't read Icelandic. I just thought, he's such a big fan of Leifs, he's going to enjoy to see that this book has come out. And he wrote a little blurb in the New Yorker saying, hey, I got this really interesting book in the mail, and Leifs is such a fascinating composer and I wish I could read even just one word of it. And I think this prompted editors in the States to get in touch with me. It was not something that I started out thinking about. So I was approached by Sabine Feist and Denise von Glaan, who were editors for this series of music Nature Plays at Indiana University Press. And they said, well, we know about your book. We would really be interested in getting an English version of it. And I thought, of course, sure. But it took a long time for me to actually rewrite it in a way that I was happy with, because I felt like I sort of needed to adjust my lens, if you will, of the way I was looking at things. There were things in the Icelandic version that needed fleshing out for, let's say, a readership that does not know very much about Icelandic history or Icelandic culture. So I have to, you know, explain things about nature, history, literature, et cetera, that I wouldn't have to explain for Icelanders. And at the same time, there were things, I guess, in the Icelandic version that were just a little bit too detailed in sort of the local specifics that I had to take out. So it was quite a substantial rewrite, and it took me a few years to get it just right, but in the end, I was really happy with how it came out.
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Ari Barbalat
And you describe the libraries and archives you consulted in your research process. How would you evaluate their helpfulness?
- [57:17]
Arnie Heimir
Mostly, I did the research for this at the Icelandic National Library, which has the Leif's archives. And as I said, it's a huge archive of thousands of letters and all these scores and everything. They were incredibly helpful. I could never have done this without their help. They were always ready to find things and get me things that I needed. So they were, I guess, the most helpful in. In that sense. I. There was also. There's a really, really useful website in Iceland where all newspapers have been scanned and are searchable. So in terms of finding, for example, reviews of Leifz's concerts or copies of writings that he published, that was an incredibly useful website as well to use. So, yes, these were, I guess, I mean, there were a few other libraries as well that I had to use, both in the United States and in Germany, of course, relating to his reception there. But mostly it was the archive in Iceland.
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Ari Barbalat
Would you like to express gratitude publicly to anyone who was helpful in your research, editing, writing, or preparation process?
- [58:44]
Arnie Heimir
I think one of the most influential people for me in terms of my scholarship and especially my scholarship on Leifs, has been Hjalmar Ragnarsson, the composer who was really the first person to properly study Leif's music and was incredibly encouraging to me as I was starting my research. I consulted with him already when I was doing my thesis on the organ concerto. And when I moved back to Iceland after finishing my PhD, he became basically my employer because he was dean of the Iceland University of the Arts when I was teaching at the music department there. And he read both the Icelandic version and the English version in draft and commented very helpfully on both of them and has just always been incredibly supportive, and I would also say, of course, Denise von Grahn and Sabine Feist for having the idea to commission the English version from me, which, as I say, was somewhat unexpected at the time. And I'm so glad that I got the opportunity to do it can you.
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Ari Barbalat
Compare and contrast the controversies surrounding Yann Leif's and his legacy with the controversy surrounding Richard Faulkner and his legacy?
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Arnie Heimir
Yeah, well, it's interesting because in many ways, even though Leif's sort of in a way denounced Wagner artistically and felt like there were many things that Wagner had blatantly misunderstood about the Nordic psyche or whatever you want to call it, the two of them were I guess in some ways similar. And there, there are many threads that sort of connect the two. I mean, obviously, you know, great artists with, with difficult personalities and, and views that are sort of difficult to, to correlate with, with their output and, and all of that. Basically, Leifs felt like Wagner had come close to or attempted to create this sort of Nordic Renaissance, as he called it in music, but had not been successful. And he mentions things like the Overture to the Flying Dutchman as one of the few examples where Wagner really taps into something that Leif's also considered Nordic. I mean there's a sort of, sort of primitive, there's a storm, which obviously is also typical for Leifs because he depicts storms a lot of the time in his music. But overall, like I said earlier, I mean the whole concept of the Eta Oratorio that occupies Leifs for most of his life is basically trying to correct Wagner's Ring cycle. So there's that. And overall this idea of the Nordic Renaissance, I mean, in a way it's indebted to Wagner and at the same time sort of renouncing him or trying to do better than that in some way. But that's sort of. And again these sort of somewhat dubious aesthetics of the north versus the south and all of that and sort of Wagner's anti Semitism and how Wagner was appropriated by the Nazis. And you see, it's so interesting to see the physical program of this concert that the Berlin philharmonic gave in 1936 where the first half was music by Johan Leifs and the second half was music by Richard Wagner. And I'm not sure how much Leifs actually liked that, that the two of them were being put on a program together. But in a way it, it says a lot that the Nazis would have put them together on the same program. There is something that connects them, even though Leifs would have probably hated to admit it.
- [63:10]
Ari Barbalat
Would it be a stretch to think of Jan Leifs as foreshadowing the genre of post rock music often associated with the Icelandic musical act Sigur Ross? Is that far fetched? Is there anything to that? Are there any musical or aesthetic Parallels between Jan Leif's music and the post rock music in Iceland that many who are familiar with Sigur Ross would associate Siguross with.
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Arnie Heimir
Well, I don't know about Sigurd Rose specifically, but this is a really interesting question that a lot of people have sort of thought about for, for a while in the last, especially in the last few years is this whole idea of what does it mean to. To make. Be making Icelandic music? And in a way, I mean Leifs is the one who starts that whole, that whole thing going in his music. And I think a lot of Icelandic musicians, I guess it's more sort of obvious in the, in the classical field, but I mean you can probably stretch it out to, you know, for example the, the post rock group. So like you mentioned, Sigurdos and others as well, is just the, the whole idea of capturing some kind of Icelandic sound, Icelandic essence, something that is often slow moving, that is so evokes these expanses, this vastness of nature, for example, the slow moving harmonies etc, etc, the emphasis on the 5th as sort of a foundational interval is something that you see in music, for example, by Anna Thorvaldstokter, who is probably Iceland's best known contemporary composer today. So even if you can't always map out specific correlations, I think there is the sense in which the whole notion of trying to represent Iceland musically is something that dates back to Leifs. And I think almost everyone who is currently making music in Iceland is aware of that legacy, even though no one is directly imitating him. I mean he hasn't had any followers in the direct sense that. I mean there has never been a school, let's say of Leif's imitators or he never really had any students for example. But I think anyone making music in Iceland now is aware of the legacy and in some way influenced by what he was trying to do in his music.
- [66:08]
Ari Barbalat
As we bring our dialogue today to a close, can you kindly tell us about where your time and attention have gone since completing this work?
- [66:16]
Arnie Heimir
I'm now in the sort of beginning phases of writing a book that sort of deals with the first real generation, if you will, of Icelandic modernist composers. So in a way a generation of composers that took up Leif's calling for a modern new Icelandic music. This only happened after the war in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. And so what I'm looking at is how musical modernism developed at that time. Sort of in the shadow of Leifs, but also incorporating influences from, you know, what was happening in the post war musical field both in Europe and the United States, being influenced by, let's say, Karl Han, Stockhausen in Germany, John Cage in America, et cetera, et cetera. And that caused a whole new period of discussion and debate about what new music should be like, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm gradually moving forward into the 20th century, looking at the composers who.
- [67:29]
Ari Barbalat
Came after Leif's as we end our dialogue today, I'd like to thank you wholeheartedly for your erudition and eloquence throughout the course of today's dialogue. I can hardly be more grateful.
- [67:41]
Arnie Heimir
Thank you very much. My pleasure.
- [67:43]
Ari Barbalat
As we end today, I'm signing off as Ari Barbolette, your host on the new Books in History channel of the New Books Network podcast. Today I've been honored to engage a dialogue with Arnie Heimir in Golfzone. He is a senior researcher at the Reykjavik Academy. We have been discussing his recently published book, Jan Leafs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, published in Bloomington, Indiana by Indiana University Press, 2019. Thank you wholeheartedly.
- [68:12]
Arnie Heimir
Thank you.
- [68:25]
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