Leaves of Leifs

Ten years ago, I excitedly greeted Arní Heimir Ingólfsson's biography of Jón Leifs, even though it was in Icelandic and I understood nary a word. It took a little while, but Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, Arní's English-language adaptation of his book, is now available from Indiana University Press. It's a thoroughly absorbing study of a formidable and sometimes troubling figure who possessed one of the more original musical voices of the twentieth century. None other than Björk supplies a blurb: "He pioneered in notating glaciers and orchestrating eruptions, sometimes masterpieces (sometimes not), but he had the courage to embrace the cliché and show us the way."