Icarus

Abstract

Discussions about music, as with those about life, often circle around the idea of goal-directed motion. In these conversations, many of the metaphors we use to describe directionality can apply across contexts—stasis vs. transition, cycles of repetition vs. developing variation, drive vs. aimlessness, and so on. Similarly, many of us tend to attribute these labels to our perception of a piece’s agency, anthropomorphizing musical gestures as though they were characters on a journey.

My objective in Icarus was to reflect on the symbiosis between the transitions we undergo in and outside of the listening experience. (As a personal aside, this piece was written at a time when the clearly delineated goals of academia gave way to the uncertain ones that dictate what comes next in life.) Like the mercurial transitions that connect the primary and secondary theme areas in late-Romantic sonatas, what was once the obvious end-goal now becomes one of several alternative, often-conflicting possibilities, conjuring a state of unrest and instability. Making decisions in a world of increasing opportunities is the spice of life... yes, except for that moment where competing internal dichotomies seem to keep life from moving forward. I sometimes liken this juncture to Icarus’ leap from the tower high above the cliffs of Crete, where Icarus fashioned his own fall by disastrously letting an opposing agent—hubris—distract him from the goal of flight.

The language of this piece is itself a reflection of these tensions, born of an effort to rally notions of personal fulfillment, voice, style, substance and intuition together into a showcase and distillation of all I’ve ever learned. This state is reflected, too, in the musical gestures themselves, where repeated sections (or "ritornelli") are pushed and pulled by various ingredients within the material fighting for greater prominence. With each structural repetition, the goal of a passage is colored by the implications of alternatingly prominent rhythmic, metric and/or harmonic characteristics. The end result is a collection of earnest, opposing ambitions—blazing forward while always threatening to rip the whole apart at the seams.