Icarus

For orchestra

Icarus

A twelve-minute orchestral work by Lera Auerbach, drawn toward the myth of the boy who flew too close to the sun — a music of ecstatic ascent, danger, freedom, and irreversible descent.

Year 2006
/ 2011
Duration 12′
Scoring For
orchestra
Publisher Boosey & Hawkes
/ Sikorski
Full Catalogue Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski Score and Rental Material Abbreviations PDF

Commission

Commissioned by Verbier Festival.

World Premiere

18 July 2011. Festival, Verbier — Verbier Festival Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Järvi.

The Work

Icarus enters the ancient myth not as illustration, but as an imaginative field: flight, youth, danger, intoxication, warning, freedom, and fall. The story of Icarus is not only a warning against excess; it is also a tragic image of the human need to go beyond the permitted boundary.

In this reading, Icarus is compelling precisely because he cannot fly safely. His brief ascent has the intensity of an absolute experience: the wish to reach the unreachable, the impatience of the heart, and the ecstatic moment when freedom and danger become indistinguishable.

The fall matters because the flight was real.

The myth also turns Daedalus’s invention into a profound paradox: the wings are both triumph and failure, liberation and catastrophe. The father’s masterpiece allows a human being to fly, yet it also opens the path to his son’s death. The work holds this closed circle between success and failure, freedom and gravity, vision and consequence.

Work Information

Full Title
Icarus
Year
2006/2011
Scoring
For orchestra.
Duration
12′
Instrumentation
3(=picc, afl).3(=corA).3(=bcl).3(=dbn) – 4.3.3(=btrbn).1 – timp – perc(5): BD/cyms/tam-t/t.bells/crystal glasses amplified/glsp/vib – theremin ad lib. – hp(2) – cel – pft – str.
Abbreviations PDF
Commission
Commissioned by Verbier Festival.
World Premiere
18 July 2011 — Festival, Verbier; Verbier Festival Orchestra; Neeme Järvi, conductor.
Publisher
Published by Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski.
Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski for the world.
Availability
Rental and purchase materials.
Rental
Score and rental materials: Zinfonia.

Myth, Flight, Gravity

The myth of Icarus endures because it refuses a simple moral. The danger is known, yet the risk remains necessary. Icarus does not merely disobey; he follows the nature of flight to its extreme. To fly lower would be to survive, but perhaps no longer to become Icarus.

The title is an invitation rather than an explanation. The music remains abstract, but it opens a threshold: the listener may enter through myth, memory, danger, childhood, defiance, grief, or the direct experience of sound.

  • Flight The desire to rise beyond the possible becomes the work’s central impulse.
  • Sun Radiance appears as both promise and danger.
  • Gravity The fall is not an accident, but the law that completes the myth.
  • Threshold The title opens a door to the listener’s own imagination.

Online Materials

Verified and indexed performances, publisher, rental, catalogue and reference materials for Lera Auerbach’s Icarus.

Icarus publisher logo — Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski

Publisher and Materials

Icarus is published by Boosey & Hawkes / Sikorski. Score and rental materials are available through the official publisher and Zinfonia links.