This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” brace yourself for Icelandic composer Jon Leif’s “Saga Symphony.” Scored for tuned anvils; stones; whip; shields of iron, leather, and wood; great wooden containers played by large hammers; and six ancient long horns, or lurs, the work is an intriguing blend of extravagance and austerity.
Leifs studied in Leipzig and wound up stranded in Nazi Germany for much of World War II. You’d think the National Socialists would have gone ape for this musical advocate of Norse heroism, but two things worked against him: the modernistic language of much of his output, and the fact that his wife and children were Jewish. Also, he found Wagner repellent, asserting that Wagner completely misunderstood the essence and artistic tradition of the North. Public performances of Leif’s works were discouraged (and would have been impractical anyway). Under the circumstances, he preferred to attract as little attention to himself as possible. He found escape in rereading the Icelandic sagas, even as he was used for propaganda purposes to strengthen Germany’s relations with Scandinavia.
Leifs finally managed to obtain permission to leave Germany in 1944. Unfortunately, suspicion of Nazi associations further hindered acceptance of his music abroad. It was only with a series of compact disc recordings released on the Swedish label BIS, beginning in the 1990s, that Leifs – who died in 1968 – was revealed to be Iceland’s most important composer, with a voice as distinctive as any of his time.
Iceland of a hundred years ago was a very different place than it is now. Leifs didn’t hear his first orchestra until he traveled to Leipzig. The “Saga Symphony” is a direct response to Franz Liszt’s “A Faust Symphony,” a performance of which sent the young composer into ecstasies. He went home and immediately began work on the piece we’re about to hear. However, his own approach to the symphony is quite different from Liszt’s. In terms of symphonic development, there is none to speak of. In its place are evocative fields of static harmonies.
Each of the work’s five movements is a character portrait of a hero from the Norse sagas: the vitriolic warrior Skarphedinn (Njal’s Saga), who hacks and hews with his battle axe; the strong-willed Gudrun Osvifrsdottir (Saga of the Laxardals), who avenges herself against her husband’s killer; the latently heroic comic braggart and coward Bjorn of Mork, who takes shelter behind the swashbuckler Kari Solmundarson, as Kari avenges the deaths of Njal and his sons; Grettir Asmundarson, who vanquishes the ghost of Glamr in a wrestling match, only to be haunted ever after; and the warrior-poet Tormod Kolbrunarskald (The Foster Brother’s Saga), who pulls an arrow from his heart and even in the throes of death formulates an intricate poem.
Greet your fate with courage and stoicism. Join me for “Liking the Viking,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.