Quiz question: given a choice between John Adams, Thomas Adès and Ólafur Arnalds, who in your view would be the most frequently streamed composer on the world’s largest service?

Adams’s Hallelujah Junction and Adès’s Traced Overhead would both receive respectable scores, but neither comes close to music by Arnalds.

See also: Contemporary Composer – Hildur Guðnadóttir

In fact, you could select any one of his 10 most popular online tracks and he would still win hands down.

Popularity isn’t always a sign of quality, of course, and it remains the case that a composer who has a strong social media presence (such as Arnalds) is likely to do better.

Social media or not, however, there’s no denying the enduring appeal and attraction of Arnalds’s enigmatic, ethereal and evocative music to large numbers of listeners.

In short, this unassuming Icelander has become something of a musical phenomenon.

Becoming a composer

Born in 1986 in the town of Mosfellsbaer, which lies some seven miles east of Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, Arnalds developed an interest in music from a young age.

At the beginning of his semi-autobiographical short film When We Are Born (2021), directed by Vincent Moon, he is seen flicking through old family photographs – one of him as a child behind a drum kit, another performing his first ever concert in his parents’ garage.

Watch 'Ólafur Arnalds - A Sunrise Session':

Other photos prompt him to reflect that his family ‘used to travel around a lot’, which may partly explain his music’s searching, seeking qualities.

Finding a voice through thrash metal

Arnalds’s path to composition came via an unusual route.

Having started musical life as a drummer for an Icelandic hardcore punk/thrash metal band, he shared with German metal band Heaven Shall Burn some demos of music he had written for piano and strings.

Impressed by what they heard, the band invited Arnalds to contribute some atmospheric intros and outros for their 2004 album ‘Antigone’ (the album’s opening track Echoes is an example).

More invitations followed. Arnalds had created a formula for success almost by accident.

This early style is captured on Arnalds’s first solo album, ‘Eulogy For Evolution’ (released 2007).

Although stylistically uneven and lacking focus, the album contains an abundance of creative ideas that cover an eclectic stylistic range, from dreamy ambient soundscapes to anthemic post-rock.

There’s even a nod to thrash metal on the final track.

‘Found Songs’

A clearer and more distinct voice starts to emerge on ‘Found Songs’ (2009), from the Satie-inspired Erla’s Waltz which opens the album to Grieg-like pastiche harmonisations in Romance.

Allt var hljótt (‘Everything Was Silent’) makes use of slowly moving, falling and overlapping sigh-like string lines – a technique reused by Arnalds in several subsequent compositions to great effect.

‘Found Songs’ reflects Arnalds’s interest in setting self-imposed limits for himself.

For this project, he composed and recorded one composition every day over a period of one week, making each track immediately available online.

Shocking musical simplicity

A similar approach was taken in the case of ‘Living Room Songs’ (2011), but this time with the additional aim of capturing the sound, ambience and atmosphere of the composer’s living room and the instruments playing in it.

The almost shocking simplicity of tracks such as Fyrsta (‘First’) and Tomorrow’s Song is underpinned by sophisticated sound design and recording techniques. (Arnalds first started out as a sound engineer recording Icelandic rock bands.)

A true piano sound

The piano’s sound is softened and dampened using felt material (or, as it turned out in this case, an improvised cut-up T-shirt).

Altering the piano’s sound in this way (something that others such as Chilly Gonzales, Nils Frahm and Dustin O’Halloran have also done) serves to intensify his music’s lyrical impact and expression.

Microphones were carefully positioned to magnify the pedal’s squeaks and creaks.

The very body of the instrument appears to breathe and speak with the music, adding character to its sound.

It’s a technique that Arnalds continues to use, as heard more recently in the country-folk-tinged piano solo Saman on ‘Re:member’ (2018).

‘For Now I Am Winter’

While ‘Living Room Songs’ presented Arnalds’s music as up-close and intimate, his follow-up album, ‘For Now I Am Winter’ (2013), was conceived on a much grander scale.

Featuring pop singer Arnór Dan’s haunting vocals alongside swirling, symphonic string arrangements by Nico Muhly, Reclaim and Only the Winds capture Arnalds’s music through a panoramic, wide-angle lens, while the album’s standout track Words of Amber returns to the pared-down approach of ‘Living Room Songs’.

Watch 'Ólafur Arnalds - For Now I am Winter ft. Arnór Dan':

Arnalds’s ability to paint musical perspectives using both large and small brushstrokes – to zoom in on a detail before zooming out again – marks out his music from others working in the postclassical, postminimalist vein.

Music for TV drama

Both epic and epigrammatic aspects were used to powerful effect in his music for the popular British TV drama series Broadchurch (2013-17, starring David Tennant and Olivia Colman), his brooding, foreboding music accompanying every moment of almost every scene, forming as much a part of the drama’s fabric as its storyline, characters and surroundings. Arnalds received a Bafta for the music in 2014.

More recent successes have included music for the drama series Defending Jacob and for the award-winning film Nomadland (both 2020).

‘The Chopin Project’

In addition to affirming the influence of 20th-century figures such as Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Brian Eno, Arnalds regularly acknowledges the impact on him of Chopin’s music, an interest passed on to him from an early age by his grandmother.

When I interviewed him in 2013, he said: ‘You wouldn’t call Chopin a minimalist, but in a way, he is a “melodic minimalist”.

His music is not hugely complicated, but it’s beautiful and expressive and comes from the expression of emotions rather than the communication of cerebral thoughts, concepts and ideas.’

Clear evidence of this influence can be heard on the nostalgically tinged album ‘The Chopin Project’ (2015), which includes nocturnes by Chopin performed by Alice Sara Ott alongside Chopin-inspired reflections on piano and electronics by Arnalds.

Pop experiments

An avid collaborator, Arnalds has produced electronic pop experimentations with Janus Rasmussen under the name Kiasmos (since 2009), a ‘duet’ album titled ‘Trance Frendz’ (2016) with Nils Frahm, and songs with several other artists including Josin (aka Arabella Rauch) and Bonobo (aka Simon Green).

‘Island Songs’

‘Island Songs’, released in 2016, saw Arnalds set himself the task of visiting seven different locations across Iceland during a seven-week period and working alongside local poets and musicians.

Some of these contributions add a rougher hew to his smoothly polished surfaces, confirming the composer’s view that ‘ultimately it is people rather than places that inspire music and art’.

Arnalds’s music often flaunts these imperfections. As he once said: ‘It’s the tiny little mistakes that make a piece come alive.’

As album titles such as ‘Found Songs’, ‘Living Room Songs’ and ‘Island Songs’ indicate, Arnalds’s compositions often gravitate towards a kind of verse–chorus structure, even when the vocals are absent.

Nevertheless, he often places the song format within a broader, more classical, archlike design.

Watch 'Ólafur Arnalds - Doria':

When I asked him whether this was a conscious approach, he stated: ‘I’m conscious of it, but it comes in a way by itself. I don’t decide how to do this. It somehow turns out that a lot of the songs I write end up with this long arch that has a high point somewhere towards the end.’

The final track on ‘Island Songs’, Doria, features a player piano playing minimalist-style looping patterns digitally triggered by Arnalds from another keyboard.

Embracing technology

In effect, the process reverses the idea of synthesisers replacing pianos, as in this instance MIDI technology is used to capture the acoustic reality of ‘flesh-and-blood’ instruments, full of subtle nuances, mechanical anomalies and sonic imperfections.

Tradition and technological innovation continue to inform Arnalds’s aesthetic.

More recently, the British music technology company Spitfire Audio have turned some of his most innovative technological inventions into commercial products.

One example is Stratus, which Arnalds initially developed with his friend the musician and programmer Halldór Eldjárn.

A custom-built piano sensor recognises notes that are played in real time and transforms them into MIDI through the Stratus program.

All this may sound like the geeky invention of a crazy musical scientist, but beautiful floating qualities can be created with this cutting-edge technology, and these can be heard on Loom, the opening track from Arnalds’s most recent album, ‘Some Kind of Peace’ (2020) – further evidence that this popular composer continues to push technological and musical boundaries in invigoratingly creative ways.

Ólafur Arnalds – best albums

‘Island Songs’

Ólafur Arnalds pf/synth Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir voc et al

Those who criticise Arnalds’s music for its lack of variety should check out this album, which showcases his stylistic breadth through the talent and artistry of his country’s musicians and communities. It remains one of the composer’s favourite projects. The performances are also captured on an excellent accompanying DVD directed by Baldvin Zophoníasson.

‘Broadchurch’

Arnór Dan voc Ólafur Arnalds pf et al

This Bafta-winning soundtrack underscored the gripping crime drama TV series with a set of subtly crafted cues that are suggestive rather than prescriptive. The drama’s ominous tone is perfectly captured in the Philip Glass-like ‘Beth’s Theme’.

‘Living Room Songs’

Ólafur Arnalds pf et al

This offers an excellent introduction to Arnalds’s enigmatic, fragile, pared-down style. Very much centred on the composer’s preferred combination of piano, strings and electronics, the serene, uplifting Near Light has become one of his most successful pieces.

Ólafur Arnalds – life in brief

1986 Born November 3

2007–8 Composition studies at Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavík, for a year before dropping out to focus on career

2011 Breakthrough album: ‘Living Room Songs’

2014 Bafta TV Craft award for Original Music, for Broadchurch

2015 Edda Award for Best Music, for film Vonarstraeti (‘Life in a Fishbowl’)

2020 Emmy nomination, Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music, for Defending Jacob

2021 With Atli Örvarsson: Icelandic Music Award, Best Album – Music for Film and Theatre, for Defending Jacob

2022 Nominated for two Grammys: Loom – Best Dance/Electronic Recording; The Bottom Line – Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals

This article originally appeared in the May 2022 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue – subscribe today