Árni Heimir Ingólfsson

My main research project for the last year and a half has been analyzing the rise of modernism in Icelandic music in the 1950s and 60s. This was a momentous time on the Icelandic music scene, which was growing increasingly more professional with both perfomers and composers returning from studies abroad. Among these were several that would become the leading composers of their generation, all of whom wrote music that can to some degree be described as modernist: Magnús Blönda

Seeing one’s books reviewed is always both exciting and nerve-wracking. After all, any author who publishes a scholarly book will have worked for years to get everything right: the myriad details, the larger picture, the writing style … as well as, closer to publication, the bibliography, proof-reading, permissions to use photographs … the list is endless. And then, once the book is out there in the world, a few people will have the unenviable job of boiling its contents down

To be fair, this is not the project’s official title. But some of my friends jokingly refer to it this way, since they find the whole...