Books
Music at World’s End. Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland.
SUNY Press, 2025 / Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 2024.
Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, 2024
The Songbook of Rev. Ólafur Jónsson of Sandar. Editor, with Johnny Lindholm, Margrét Eggertsdóttir, and Þórunn Sigurðardóttir.
Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, 2024.
Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland.
Indiana University Press, 2019.
Notable Book of the Year 2019, Alex Ross, The New Yorker
**** BBC Music Magazine, March 2020
Tónlist liðinna alda. Íslensk handrit, 1100–1800.
(Icelandic Music Manuscripts, 1100–1800, in Icelandic).
Crymogea, 2019.
Sounds Icelandic. Essays on Icelandic Music in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Editor, with Þorbjörg Daphne Hall, Nicola Dibben, and Tony Mitchell. Equinox Publishing, 2019.
Saga tónlistarinnar. Tónlist á Vesturlöndum frá miðöldum til nútímans.
(The History of Music, from the Middle Ages to Today).
Forlagið, 2016.
Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, 2016
Non-fiction book of the year, Morgunblaðið, 2016
Jón Leifs. Líf í tónum.
Mál og menning, 2009.
Nominated for the Icelandic Literary Prize, 2009
Árni Heimir Ingólfsson is an Icelandic musicologist and holds a PhD in historical musicology from Harvard University. His primary area of interest is the history of Icelandic music from the Middle Ages to the present. He is the author of several books, including Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland (2019), which was listed as one of that year's best books on music by Alex Ross of The New Yorker. His most recent book, Music at World’s End, is a study of the Jewish musicians who fled Germany and Austria to Iceland in the 1930s, and their significant and lasting contribution to the music scene there. The book is nominated for the 2024 Icelandic Literary Prize (non-fiction category)—Ingólfsson’s third nomination for that award.
Ingólfsson is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed articles, as well as 18 entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He has contributed to volumes such as The Nature of Nordic Music and Sounds Icelandic, which he co-edited. He is also the co-editor of Söngbók séra Ólafs Jónssonar á Söndum, an edition of 51 songs and poems by an Icelandic priest in the early seventeenth century.
Praised as "a terrific lecturer" by American Record Guide, Ingólfsson has given lectures and pre-concert talks throughout the world, including in Europe, Asia, and the United States. He was a special guest speaker at the LA Philharmonic’s Reykjavík Festival in 2017, an Erasmus guest lecturer at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, and has held visiting fellowships at Oxford, Harvard, and Yale Universities. In 2013, he was a Mellon Visiting Fellow at I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy.
Ingólfsson has wide-ranging experience as performing musician. As conductor of the vocal ensemble Carmina, he is a two-time winner of the Icelandic Music Award, and their CD Melódía won rave reviews, including an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone magazine. He has been interviewed by international media such as The New Yorker, Gramophone, and BBC Radio 3, and has held advisory posts for international foundations such as the Nordic Culture Fund. He is also an active pianist and harpsichordist and has performed on a number of CDs, including Nico Muhly’s Mothertongue (2007).
CDs based on original research
Hymnodia sacra. An Icelandic Music Manuscript from 1742.
Smekkleysa, 2010.
CD of the Year (classical music), Icelandic Music Awards, 2011
Melódía. An Icelandic Manuscript from the Seventeenth Century.
Smekkleysa, 2008.
Editorʼs Choice, Gramophone, November 2009
CD of the Year (classical music), Icelandic Music Awards, 2008
Tvísöngur. Two-Part Music from Iceland.
Smekkleysa, 2004.
Other writings, lectures, broadcasts, etc.
Lectures on Icelandic music at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Northwestern Universities, University of Southern California, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Mannes School of Music/The New School (NYC), Uppsala University (Sweden), University of Leeds (UK), Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien (Vienna), Tokyo University of the Arts, Waseda University (Japan).
Lectures at conferences of the American Musicological Society (Chicago 2024, online 2021, Boston 2019, Indianapolis 2010, Columbus 2002), International Musicological Society (Athens 2022, Tokyo 2017), Medieval/Renaissance Music Conference (Basel 2019, Maynooth 2018), Royal Musical Association (London 2024), Nordic Musicological Congress (Helsinki, 2004), and others.
Radio programs for Iceland National Radio, including ten-part series (40 minutes each) on women composers in the nineteenth century, 2021; seven-part series (50 minutes each) on Beethoven’s life and works, 2020.
CD liner notes for international releases by BIS, Da Capo, Delos, Smekkleysa, Sony Music.
Pre-concert talks at Reykjavík Festival, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Walt Disney Concert Hall, April 2017 (“a terrific lecturer,” American Record Guide).
Program notes and pre-concert talks, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, 2002–2022; pre-performance talks, Icelandic Opera, 2005–2011.
Organized international symposia on “Music and Exile in a Global Perspective” (Reykjavík, 2023) and “Music and Liturgy in Medieval Manuscripts” (Reykjavík, 2018).
Interviews on Icelandic music for local and international media, including The New Yorker, Gramophone, BBC Radio 3, ARTE TV.
Advisory roles and committees, including the Nordic Culture Fund, European Research Council.
Performances at international music festivals (with Carmina Chamber Choir), including Spitalfields Music Festival, London (2010), Wege durch das Land, Germany (2010), Festival d’Ile de France, Paris (2008), Stockholm Early Music Festival (2006).
Collaborations with other musicians, including Björk (Biophilia), Nico Muhly (Mothertongue), Ásgerður Júníusdóttir (Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson: Complete Songs).
Articles (selected)
“The Musical Reformation in Iceland, 1550–1700.” In Music and the Reformations, eds. Daniel Trocmé-Latter and Paul Newton-Jackson. Brill, forthcoming.
“The Works of Ólafur Jónsson, Seventeenth-Century Priest and Poet/Composer.” In Culture in the Western Fjords, eds. Birna Bjarnadóttir and Ingi Björn Guðnason. Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, forthcoming.
“Icelandic Polyphony.” In Polifonia Mundi, Encyclopedia of World Polyphony, ed. Joseph Jordania. Forthcoming.
“Iceland.” New, updated article for Grove Music Online. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
“A Devotional Song from Iceland.” In The Museum of Renaissance Music: A History in 100 Exhibits, eds. Vincenzo Borghetti and Tim Sheppard, 47–49. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023.
“The Reception of Hans Thomissøn’s Psalmebog and Niels Jespersen’s Graduale in Iceland.” In Danske reformationssalmer i kontekst, ed. Marita Akhøj Nielsen, 143–164. Copenhagen: Det Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab, 2022.
“Yet another “Foreign Tune” in Rask 98.” Gripla 32 (2021): 289–300.
“Singing and Writing Plainchant in Lutheran Iceland, ca. 1550–1800.” Gripla 31 (2020): 293–332.
“Copying the Icelandic Graduale in the 16th and 17th Centuries.” Opuscula 18 (2020): 1–59.
“‘Follow My Voice’: Structure and Improvisation in Björk’s Mouth’s Cradle.” In Music and Climate Change, ed. Britta Sweers. European Journal of Musicology, 2020.
“Drafting a New Lutheran Liturgy in Post-Reformation Iceland.” In Celebrating Lutheran Music. Scholarly Perspectives at the Quincentenary, eds. Mattias Lundberg and Maria Schildt. Studia musicologica Upsaliensia 29 (2019): 49–66.
“Starting from Scratch: Nation Building and the Creation of an Icelandic Choral Tradition.” In The Nature of Nordic Music, ed. Tim Howell, 71–86. Routledge, 2019.
“Two Sixteenth-Century Music Fragments at the Stockholm Royal Library.” Gripla 29 (2018): 7–33.
“Hymnodia sacra and its Influence on the 1772 Icelandic Hymnal.” In Mirrors of Virtue. Manuscripts and Printed Books in Post-Reformation Iceland, eds. Margrét Eggertsdóttir and Matthew Driscoll, 31–55. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2017.
“Clothing Irons and Whisky Bottles: Creating an Icelandic Musical Avant-Garde.” In History of Nordic Avant-Garde, 1950–1970, ed. Marianne Ølholm, 273–290. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
“Echoes from the Periphery: Rask 98, Modal Change, and Oral Transmission in Seventeenth-Century Iceland.” In City, Chant, and the Topography of Early Music, eds. Sean Gallagher and Michael S. Cuthbert, 165–187. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
“Five “Foreign Tunes” in Rask 98.” Gripla 23 (2012): 7–52.
18 articles on Icelandic music in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, eds. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell. London: Macmillan, 2001.