Conference Agenda

Iceland’s critical strategic location in the North Atlantic made it an important ally of the United States during the Cold War. Yet the population of the country, which had only recently gained independence from Denmark, was divided on the issue of NATO membership and the presence of US troops, as stipulated in a 1951 bilateral agreement. This, in turn, led US authorities to sponsor performances there by artists who would demonstrate American culture at its best, including orchestras, chamber musicians, soloists, and composers (including pianist Ann Schein, the LaSalle Quartet, and new symphonic works by Henry Cowell and Cecil Effinger). The USSR, on the other hand, cultivated a strong relationship with the cultural association MÍR in Reykjavík, dispatching artists such as Mstislav Rostropovich and Tatjana Nikolaeva to concertize widely in Iceland.

All of this greatly enhanced the local music scene in a country where the serious cultivation of classical music had only begun a few decades earlier. The programming, which often included modernist works that had never been heard there before, proved particularly stimulating to a generation of young local composers. The struggle for political power on the musical scene was felt even at the country’s major institutions, such as the local symphony orchestra, where conductors from the Eastern and Western Blocs competed for the role of chief conductor.

The musical propaganda of the Cold War superpowers in Iceland, and its connection to local political developments, has not been studied fully until now. Drawing on local sources such as newspaper reports and archival documents, as well as documents in US archives and the recent work of musicologists Emily Abrams Ansari and Danielle Fosler-Lussier, I will explore how one of the most recent classical music cultures in Europe was transformed through “soft power” Cold War propaganda, with profound short- and long-term effects on the local music scene.