Organ Concerto

The Organ Concerto, Op. 7 is an organ concerto by Icelandic composer Jón Leifs. Its origins go back to 1917, when Leifs was just 18, and it was completed in 1930. It is an uncompromisingly dark work somewhat linked to medieval music, with influences from the tvísöngur tradition in a dissonant triadic context. It contains three movements, with a short introduction and finale framing a much longer Passacaglia consisting in thirty variations. Its theme comprises the total chromatic, and critic Alex Ross has described the overall effect as "Bach walking in the tundra." As the musicologist Árni Heimir Ingólfsson has pointed out in his book Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland, another important thematic strand in the work is the medieval Icelandic chorale Allt eins og blómstrið eina, which Leifs had encountered during a folk-song collecting trip in Iceland in 1928. This theme inspired variations 12-13 of the Passacaglia, as well as appearing as a grand culmination of the work in variations 27-29.