The fifth episode of Season 4 of The Sounding Jewish Podcast features Dr. Árni Heimir Ingólfsson. We explore the unexpected start of his book Music at World's End, which focuses on the lives and careers of three exiled musicians who made their way from Nazi Germany and Austria to Iceland, and revitalized Iceland's classical music scene in the process.

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 was nominated for the 2024 Icelandic Literary Prize (non-fiction category)—Ingólfsson’s third nomination for that award.

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 spring 2026, he is Visiting Research Fellow at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. In Reykjavík, he is Senior Researcher at the Reykjavík Academy, working on a book project on modernism in Icelandic music, ca. 1950-1980.

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).