Icelandic composer, pianist, and conductor
This is an Icelandic name. The last name is a family name, but this person is referred to by the given name Jón.
Jón Leifs (born Jón Þorleifsson on 1 May – 30 July ) was an Icelandic composer, pianist, and conductor.
Jón Leifs was born Jón Þorleifsson, at the farm Sólheimar, then in the Húnavatnssýsla, northwesternIceland.[1] He left for Germany in to study at the Leipzig Conservatory. He graduated in having studied piano with Robert Teichmüller, but decided not to embark on a career as a pianist, devoting his time instead to conducting and composing. During this period he also encountered the legendary pianist-composer Ferruccio Busoni, who urged him to "follow his own path in composition".[2]
In the s Jón Leifs conducted a number of symphony orchestras in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Norway and Denmark, thus becoming the only internationally successful Icelandic conductor to date,[1] although he failed to obtain a fixed position. During a tour of Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland with the Hamburger Philharmoniker, he gave the very first symphonic concerts in Iceland in the summer of (a total of 13 concerts with different programmes).[1] During this period, he was also very active as a writer on music and musical interpretation, both in German and Icelandic. Between and , he travelled through Iceland on three occasions to record folk songs among the population in his home county Húnavatnssýsla in Northern Iceland. His observations on this were published in both Icelandic and German periodicals.
Beginning with piano arrangements of Icelandic folk songs, Jón Leifs started an active career as a composer in the s.[1] From the s he concentrated his efforts on the composition of large orchestral works, some of which were not performed until after his death. Most of his output is inspired by Icelandic natural phenomena. In the piece Hekla he depicts the eruption of the volcano Hekla which he witnessed. Dettifoss (Op. 57) was inspired by Dettifoss, Europe’s second most powerful waterfall. In the Saga Symphony he musically portrays five characters from the classic Icelandic sagas.
In Jón Leifs was appointed Musical Director of the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service. However, having found it difficult to implement his vision for the radio service, he resigned from the post in and returned to Germany.[1]
Jón Leifs married the pianist Annie Riethof soon after graduating from the Leipzig Conservatory.[1] They had two daughters, Snót Jónsdóttir and Líf Jónsdóttir, and made their home first in Wernigerode. Since Riethof was Jewish, the family lived under constant threat of Nazi persecution. In , the couple managed to obtain permission to leave Germany and moved to Sweden with their daughters. However, by this time their marriage was showing signs of strain and they divorced in Jón Leifs later married, and divorced, a Swedish woman, Thea Andersson. His third wife, who survived him, was Þorbjörg Jóhannsdóttir Leifs (–). She and Jón had one son, Leifur (–).
In Jón Leifs moved back to Iceland (leaving his family in Sweden), and became a fierce proponent of music education and of artists’ rights. This included working for the ratification by Iceland of the Berne Convention, which happened in , and setting up the Performing Rights Society of Iceland (STEF) in [1]
In tragedy struck. Jón Leifs’ younger daughter Líf drowned in a swimming accident off the coast of Sweden in , aged only eighteen. Overcome with grief, he composed four works dedicated to her memory,[3] including Requiem Op. 33b for mixed choir, perhaps his most celebrated piece. The other works are Torrek Op. 33a, for solo voice and piano, Erfiljóð (In memoriam) Op. 35 for male choir, and the string quartet Vita et mors Op.
Jón Leifs composed his last work, Consolation, Intermezzo for string orchestra, as he had only weeks to live. He died of lung cancer in Reykjavík in
Jón Leifs and his first wife are the subjects of the film Tears of Stone (Tár úr steini) () by Icelandic director Hilmar Oddsson. A square in Bergholz-Rehbrücke (Nuthetal, Germany), where he lived with his family from the s until , is named after him. An English-language biography, Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, by the musicologist Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, was published in and was listed as one of the year's most notable books by The New Yorker critic Alex Ross (music critic).[4]
The Iceland Symphony Orchestra with En Shao (cond.) has performed Hekla Op[6] and Dettifoss,[7] Op.