Further Information

Welcome

I am Helgi and I am a composer. I think I formally became a composer when I received my first composer's grant in 2007, to write my first opera "Skuggablóm" (Shadow Flowers) which was premiered that same summer by the opera department of the Reykjavík Academy of Singing and Vocal Arts. I have been writing music for much longer than this of course, and during my time I have written a whole host of songs, choral works, works for various chamber groups, all kinds of experimental works and seven operas (you can read more and listen to recordings here: https://linktr.ee/ingvarsson)

My music has been performed publicly throughout northern Europe, but...

... I have one thing left.

To release a record.

Now it's time, hopefully with your help. Recording, designing and pressing a record like this one is very expensive.

The main focus of the album will be the premiere of my new 20-minute work "Fegursta blómið" (The Most Beautiful Flower / La plus belle fleur), which I wrote especially for Schola Cantorum, based on excerpts from the novels of Icelandic Nobel price winner for literature, Halldór Kiljan Laxness (awarded 1955). The new record will also feature recent art songs by me like "Sofðu, sofðu" (Sleep now), "Hallar nú haustrænum dögum" (Autumn days are approaching), and "Vornótt" (Spring Night) from my opera Þögnin (The Silence).

All of these songs have been performed publicly, some many times, but none of these works have been released on an album before.)

Pictured: Schola Cantorum (2019)

The Most Beautiful Flower

“People are defenceless when face to face with love.” (Salka Valka)

Once I collected beautiful fragments of text from the novels of Laxness. I remember clearly where I was when I came across the first fragment, it was on the London Underground. I discovered these fragments by chance, fragments like “Was this life: to have loved one summer as a child, and not realise it until it was over?” and “Always when I see or hear something beautiful I forgive everyone everything” from Heimsljós (World Light). I didn’t know what I was going to do with this material, but I felt I had to keep it safe. It then waited patiently in a notebook on a shelf for a few years.

Laxness presents the feelings of a single character as if they were the feelings of all humanity; the feelings of the character become our feelings and connect us to the world. We become part of a beautiful whole, part of a story that is endless, where nothing is new under the sun, but that is precisely what is so beautiful.

In spring 2024, Schola Cantorum and I decided to work together. I grabbed my old notebook of the shelve.

The outcome: “The Most Beautiful Flower” for eight-part vocal ensemble.

- "The most beautiful flower of all, it lives in a hidden place, few ever see it, many are overlooked, [...\] those who discover it will never see another flower again. All day long you think of it. When you sleep you dream about it. You die with its name on your lips." (World Light)

Sleep now - “no! sing the flowers!”

Sleep now is dedicated to my son, Emil Freyr. He was not only my inspiration, he also helped me directly with the writing.

When the song was almost ready, Emil (then two years old) wanted to sit on my lap and listen to the result. He had previously learned to recognize the opening melody“Now the little flowers are sleeping / on a bright July night” and he asked to hear it by saying“the flowers!”and climb into my lap. He wanted to hear the opening section again and again, but whenever it came to the bridge“in the birch crown, the voice of the wind, whispers its dreams low” he confidently said“no! sing the flowers!”This happened several times, confirming my suspicion that the bridge was not good enough.

After this, very clear, feedback, I decided to rewrite those bars. When I was done, Emil did the same thing, said “the flowers!” and crawled into my lap, and we played through the song. This time however, he never said “no” but listened attentively from beginning to end and when it was over he said “again!”

Then I was convinced that the song was ready.

Above video: Rannveig talks about Helgi and his music - in Icelandic

Autumn days are approaching

“echoes from unrecorded songs,
unsung tones abound”

"The premiere of Helgi's new art song was a special and memorable moment in this musical celebration."

- Guthrun Olafsdottir, Hafnaborg Song Festival (ICE) (2025)

In in the summer of 2021 I came across a very special book of poetry in Fróði, a fascinating second-hand bookshop in Akureyri, north Iceland. The title on the spine caught my eye: “Poetry of the people of Húnavatn county”. I am a descendant of that area on my father’s side. It then turned out that this collection, published in 1955, contains a large volume of beautiful poetry written by friends of my grandfather. I felt a strong emotional connection to it.

When Rannveig then asked me in the spring of '25 if I had any songs about autumn - but I had already written songs that touch on the other three seasons - it turned out that I didn't. But, I remembered a poem from the book I had found four years earlier (literal translation):

Now autumn days are approaching,
the evenings are adorned with shrouds
with echoes from unrecorded songs,
unsung tones abound.

The leaf winds play,
the flowers are lying in a dream,
the mountain peaks are adorned with a snow helmet,
the migratory birds soar by.

The old land thunders,
wrapped in a veil of silence,
the calm sea
creeps with the wind.

-Sæmundur G. Jóhannesson

Pressed on bio-vinyl

The album will be pressed on bio-vinyl, which has a 90% smaller carbon footprint without compromising on sound quality.

Pictured: Mairi Harris performing Helgi's music in Germany in 2021.