Icarus (2012)
3.3.3.3-4.3.3.1-timp., 3pc. harp-strings | 14'
Icarus is a well-known figure from Greek mythology; using artificial wings, he flew too close to the sun, and when the heat from the sun melted the wax of his wings, he fell to his death.
This piece is a free tone-poem on the myth of Icarus. However, it was not originally conceived as such. The "seed" of the piece was a chord that I played one day on the piano that was intriguing to me; it was a C-augmented triad with a B-augmented triad an octave above, otherwise known as an 014589 set, or an augmented scale. I liked the sound of this chord very much, and I began to move it around and take it apart. This resulted in most of the harmony of the piece, as well as the main motive that appears at the beginning of the piece and several other motivic ideas. In general, the piece is very motive-based, and almost all of the ideas are connected to other places in the piece or to one another.
In orchestrating the piece, I used different styles to create contrast between different sections. Much of the piece has one or two clear melodic lines that act as foreground, usually doubled between sections. However, there are many places where I chose to blend this line, either by creating a texture using most of the orchestra or by using the individual families or groups of instruments as separate units to contrast with one another. The style of orchestration paralleled the harmonic complexity of the music. Conceptually, I was inspired by the tone poems of Richard Strauss, especially Also Sprach Zarathustra and Don Juan. One other large influence on the brass and percussion writing was Sun-Treader by Carl Ruggles.
The last piece that had to fall into place in this composition was the title. "Icarus" seemed to highlight the most important aspects of the piece: I found that the aggressive rising and falling figures throughout the piece could characterize the desire to keep flying higher and higher, as Icarus does in the myth, and could also represent the rising and falling of Icarus's body; the long, suspended chords, and the dream-like repetition of the harp motive, seemed to suggest a state of flying; the stubbornness of the repeated notes that occur in many sections could stand for the stubbornness of Icarus at refusing to follow his father's wishes; finally, the moment of contrast in which the piece becomes more conventionally tonal and the orchestration is thinner might suggest the feeling experienced by Icarus as he believes he is flying as high as the sun. The piece can therefore be seen as a character piece on Icarus, or a telling of the myth, or, as I would hope, both. The only interpretation I hope to not see is one in which the composer of this piece is metaphorically cast in the role of Icarus.