Jón Leifs
Source: Wikipedia: Jón Leifs
Music • Historical Archive • 🇮🇸 Iceland • 0 views

Jón Leifs 🇮🇸

Jón Leifs (Known as "Jón Leifs")
Modernist Composer, Conductor, Founder of STEF, Creator of Hekla and Saga Symphony
Born 1899-05-01 🇮🇸 Sólheimar, Iceland
Passed Away 1968-07-30 Reykjavík, Iceland
Lifespan 69 years old
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Notice / Correction
"Our music must be forged from basalt, ice, and erupting fire; polite melodies have no place in a land of volcanoes."

Archival Overview

Pioneering Icelandic modernist composer who forged an uncompromising, thunderous musical idiom depicting volcanic eruptions, geysers, and avalanches in works like Hekla and the Saga Symphony.

Biographical Record

Jón Þorleifsson was born on May 1, 1899, at Sólheimar farm in northern Iceland. Moving to Leipzig in 1916, he studied piano and conducting at the Leipzig Conservatory, marrying pianist Annie Riethof and serving as music director of the Icelandic State Broadcasting Service.

Leifs broke completely with European romanticism, deriving his raw musical idiom from ancient Icelandic tvisöngur (quintal organum) parallel fifths and the brutal forces of Icelandic nature. His tone poem Hekla (Op. 52), depicting the massive 1947 volcanic eruption, calls for nineteen percussionists playing volcanic stones, iron chains, and cannons. In 1945, he founded STEF, the Performing Rights Society of Iceland, laying the foundation of modern Icelandic musical life.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Fossvogur Cemetery
Reykjavík, Iceland
GPS: 64.1200, -21.8900
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