For the common listener, it sometimes seems like music can be divided into "contemporary" or "modernist" and "non-modernist". In reality, inside the "modernist" category there are many nuances and much more diversity than may be suspected.

For a composer who came of age in the eighties and nineties it is actually hard to subscribe to the assertion that his music was part of a serialist or modernist school. There were many technical and aesthetic innovations in much of the music of the nineties which are rarely discussed, and rarely do we see the music of the nineties presented as a distinct aesthetic statement, and not just a somewhat watered-down continuation of serialism. However, that is precisely what will be attempted in this talk, which outlines the aesthetic premises, influences and context, giving along the way some technical detail and a few examples drawn from Atli Ingólfsson's own work. 

Creation and research; music, theatre and literature, these have taken Atli Ingólfsson on extensive residencies in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden, although he finally settled down in his native Iceland in 2005, where he now holds the post of professor of composition at the Iceland University of the Arts.