| MILLISPIL | 1988 fl (picc) , cl , cl (Bcl) bn , hrn , tbn , pno 9’
comment
Millispil was begun in Milan in the spring of 1988 and finished in Paris in the autumn of that year. It was written for the Caput Ensemble, which premiered it in January 1989. It has a form characteristic of some of my pieces from this period: A series of panels, embedded in a general evolution, a sort of “variation in evolution”.
main performances
Reykjavík, January 4 1989 (Caput Ensemble)
Stockholm, October 28, 1989 (Mynt Ensemblen)

| MÉTRIQUE DU CRI, LA | 1995 (Casa Ricordi) fl , ob , cl , bn , hrn , pno , 2vn , vla , vc , cb 11’
comment
La métrique du cri was composed in 1996 for Ensemble L’Itinéraire in Paris, with support from the Icelandic Radio Composers fund.
The piece is typical of my effort to dissolve counterpoint into timbre, musical figures into general behaviour and rhythm into a metrical character. For this dissolution to be perceived I had to insist on it in various passages, which take on an almost minimalistic character although they have nothing to do with the poetics of minimalism. The form thus became quite simple and outspoken, playing with the listeners expectation or eventually his impatience. The title (“the metrics of the shout”) exemplifies the contradiction between the rational and the irrational present in my compositional behaviour.
main performances
Paris, February 24, 1996 (Ensemble L’Itinéraire)
Reykjavík, March 1997 (Caput Ensemble)
Lisbon, 1997 (same)
Warsaw, October 1999, (same)
Stockholm, Norrköping, June, 2000 (KammarensembléN)
Stavanger, April 2001 (Ensemble of the Stavanger Conservatory)
Köln, November 2007 (Ensemble of the Musikhochschule)

…MA LA MELODIA | 2000 solo piano 4’
comment
Ma la melodia is an overall ironical conceptual piece, inspired by Pasolini’s lines:
ma la melodia obbliga il cuore e la mente
ad avere come compagno di destino il cazzo;
(L’orecchiabile, from Trasumanar e organizzar)
It is a late-romantic-type tonal piece, with a melody which spelled out in letters forms an Icelandic word…
The piece is dedicated to Icelandic artist and writer Sigurdur Gudmundsson.

main performances
Reykjavík, Snorri Sigfús Birgisson
Schlangenbad, Germany, 26.10.2008  - Susanne Kessel