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ies. The inflated atmosphere of the Darmstadt course felt
rather foreign to him, but he was greatly struck by the music
of Anton Webern, which was indeed the startingpoint of
much of the continental modernism of the post-war years.
New years of silence followed. This was partly due to the
fact that he was a frequent performer on the piano and was
active in the newly-formed Musica Nova in Reykjavik. An-
other reason was his appointment as principal of the town’s
College of Music. In addition he needed time to make a
reappraisal of his experiences in Darmstadt. It was not before
1962 that he could show the results of his re-thinking with his
radical orchestral work Brotaspil. As the title suggests, it is a
game with fragments that is based on a serial composition
technique with serial control of pitch and, to a certain degree,
time values. It also has an extremely fragmentary exterior. It
is natural to see Brotaspil in the light of the European avant-
garde but the composer himself points to a source of
inspiration that is closer to hand - the modem Icelandic art of
painting that cultivated geometric abstracts at this time. And
even this may, if one so wants, be regarded as yet another
sign of Icelandic music’s liberation from the power of the
word.
It is not surprising to hear that Brotaspil was not a success.
It was probably the most audience-alienating orchestral work
to have been played in the country, and the performance (the
only one hitherto) was not good. Jon Nordal for his part drew
the conclusion that he still had some thinking to do and
remained silent for a further four years. He at length reached
a solution in 1965 - a synthesis of strict construction and
intuition that could both discipline and liberate his heavy but
yet lyrically elegiac expressionism. Its first result is to be
found in a magnificent composition with the modest title
Adagio for flute, piano, harp and strings. It is a serious,
introverted and well-thought-out piece of music. There is a
striking lack of brilliance and eye-catching details and no
Hindemithian musical craftsmanship. A further characteristic
is the strange tension between the calm objectivity of the
musical language and the strong emotions that brood and
surge under the surface. To draw the following parallel may
appear foolhardy, but it seems to me that this kind of
“narrator technique” is akin to that which one finds in the
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