Overview

A fascinating story of how three musicians, who escaped the Nazis, inspired Iceland's modern classical music. In Iceland in the 1930s, classical music was only beginning to be seriously practiced, at the same time when musicians of Jewish heritage were fleeing Nazi Germany and Austria. Despite the country's strict immigration policy, three outstanding young musicians were allowed to settle there: Robert Abraham, Heinz Edelstein, and Victor Urbancic. Their influence on Iceland's music scene as conductors, instrumentalists, teachers, and scholars proved invaluable. In Music at World's End, the first in-depth study of the lives and careers of these three musicians, musicologist Árni Ingólfsson examines their formative years in Germany and Austria, their dramatic escapes from the Nazi regime, and their triumphs and frustrating setbacks in their new homeland, a country in which Jews were virtually unknown. This fascinating case study is a valuable addition to studies of musical exile during World War II and beyond.

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Reviews

""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

Author Information

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.

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