nation has had to survive. The folk songs are deeply serious and express perhaps more than the folk songs of other countries harshness and severity. Joy does appear, but often in the form of grotesque ferocity and cold laughter. Religious humility and an anxious gloom are also to be discerned but the hardness over- shadows everything. (Jon Leifs, Islenzkt tonlistareSli, Skfrnir, Reykjavik 1922, p. 13.) It is not without reason that one asks oneself if it is not his own music that Jon Leifs is describing or, perhaps more correctly, his own opinion of his own music. He was possibly the only Icelandic musician of his time to base his whole output on a well-thought-out idea of culture, even if strongly subjective in its formulation. His aim was to draw the attention of the world to Iceland, and with the still extant “northern” cultural heritage of the island as a foundation revive a North German culture which would counterbalance the much too dominant South German culture that had, as far as he was concerned, already reached its culmination and was now in the process of declining into formalism. For this reason he searched Icelandic folk music for confirmation of his ideas and he was able to glean material that “could be renewed and form the basis of a new music”. Jon Leifs’ attitude to folk music may well remind one of Bela Bartok. Indeed Bartok was one of the few contemporary composers whose work was accepted by Jon Leifs. They drew different conclusions from their material, however. The list of Jon Leifs’ works clearly illustrates his national- istic leaning. Before about 1935, when his works were frequently performed in Germany, one finds titles such as Icelandic Overture , Icelandic Cantata , Icelandic Dances and Icelandic Folk Songs . Moreover there are songs with texts taken from the Edda (one of two similarly named collections of old Norse poems such as Havamdl) and a number of songs for choir or solo voice and piano by other Icelandic poets including the national poet Jonas Hallgrims- son. He also maintained that “the old Icelandic literature must be the corner-stone of every consideration of culture in Iceland and Scandinavia”. The Icelandic Overture was com-

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