simultaneously a succession of tones in several different cycles of different time durations. In the eleventh movement, The Lady Lion-Tamer, the composer portraits the victory of the weak over the strong. This corresponds in the music to the gradual expansion of “the weak” motif in gentle movements. The remaining nineteen movements of AEfingar are composed in a similar way following the interpretation of the different tarot cards with varying degrees of clarity, but with an undiminishing degree of creative fantasy. JEfingar can without doubt lay claim to being perhaps the largest and most remarkable piano work in Icelandic music literature. In Oratorium for soprano, clarinet and piano, written in 1981 at the request of the Swedish Radio, Snorri Birgisson cogitates about the possible existence of another world, taking an old Icelandic fragmentary text as his starting point. “Dark it is in the world, my dear Lord, the day is now waning and sliding. All the world is graced by daybreak lighting!” He interprets the text as follows: “I believe that the poet establishes the existence of two worlds - on the one hand the world we know, the dualistic world where there is both day and night, happiness and sorrow, right and left, and on the other hand, another world of which we are ignorant. I became interested in the text because it reminded me of the Indian conception of Maya and Brahma, where Maya represents the dualistic world and Brahma stands for the unknown world.” In his music, Snorri Birgisson has portrayed the dualistic world in a number of short, fragmentary movements that have dualistic relationships to each other. The other world is represented, on the other hand, by a greater, musical flow in a “timeless” translucent idiom that is at times reminiscent of chorale style. The music uses few tones and lacks any hint of superficial brilliance or agitated energy. Least of all is there any resemblance to a conventional oratorio. Dans {Dance) for solo cello is an instrumental companion work to Oratorium. It was composed in 1981-82 for Nora Kornblueh, the cellist of the Icelandic Chamber Trio in which Snorri Birgisson himself plays the piano. Dans has absolutely nothing to do with dance movements but is concerned with the balance between fixed patterns and free expression. In common with Oratorium, the music is completely bare and vulnerable. The formal conception is also reminiscent of

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