Music at World's End

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson is an independent scholar, lecturer, and pianist. He is the author of several books, including Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, and coeditor of Sounds Icelandic: Essays on Icelandic Music in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

"Music at World's End marks an exciting new chapter in Árni Heimir's oeuvre of Icelandic musical history." — Scandinavian Studies"Ingólfsson has done a magnificent job with this book. The research is formidable but lightly worn: the narrative moves with the pace of good biography, lucid where the material is tangled, humane throughout, and scrupulous in separating what can be documented from what must be surmised." — MusicWeb International"Ingólfsson's expertly researched book is generously filled with details of the lives of these musicians and their associates, along with their influences … As the twenty-first century grapples with issues of nationalism, emigration, and cultural heritage, much can be learned from Ingólfsson's pathbreaking study of exiled musicians in Iceland." — Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association"Árni Heimir Ingólfsson has written an immensely readable and informative book … This is a wonderful book that opens yet another chapter on music in exile." — Music & Letters"Music at World's End offers a wealth of new details and insight into the developments of Western art music across continental Europe and into Iceland in the twentieth century. It meaningfully positions the story of Iceland's classical music development alongside the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany and Austria (and beyond). It offers many new perspectives and details about how foreign musicians essentially built the foundation for classical music in Iceland in the early to middle twentieth century. For readers interested in continental music history, this book provides new ways of understanding how the rise of Nazism directly affected musical life in addition to the extreme personal ramifications for many European Jews and other targeted people." — Kimberly Cannady, Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology, Victoria University of Wellington"A pioneering work in exile music research." — Albrecht Dümling, musica reanimata Society, Berlin"Pioneering, perceptive, and eloquent, this book uncovers a fascinating chapter of music history that has largely been overlooked. Ingólfsson's study enriches our understanding of the interplay of migration and isolation, global and local cultural conditions near the Arctic Circle, far from and yet in conversation with mainland Europe. This exploration of how music bridges worlds and transcends borders feels more timely than ever." — Tina Frühauf, CUNY Graduate Center, New York"The Nazi terror regime which forever changed the global classical music scene also reached remote places like Iceland. Árni Ingólfsson thankfully deals with this largely overlooked facet of music history. His well-researched, attractively written, and informatively illustrated book focuses on three 'lives saved through music' by discussing their difficult and sometimes frustrating, yet groundbreaking work. All three outstanding musicians, whose remarkable life stories are told for the first time, had a major and lasting impact on the country's musical culture." — Christoph Wolff, Adams University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

• List of IllustrationsNote on Spelling and NamingIntroduction: Lives Saved through Music1. Beginnings2. Without a Home3. World's End4. "A Country Free of Jews..."5. New Realities6. Work to Be Done7. Conflict and Controversy8. EndingsPostludeAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex