This composition is based on the Greek Mythology of Icarus. For those who don’t know the story, it’s about Icarus who is imprisoned together with his father Daedalus by king Minos on Crete. Daedalus makes an escape plan and creates wings from a wooden frame, wax and feathers for him and his son to escape from the island. Because the wax can melt, he warns his son not to fly too close to the sun, or to fly too low, for his wings will become too heavy from the seawater. They fly away to their freedom, but in his enthusiasm Icarus becomes reckless and he start flying higher and higher. Untill he comes too close to the sun. His wings melt. He falls and falls, into the sea, to his death... That sea has been called the Icarian sea ever since.. (for real).

It’s a short story that has interesting themes: the escape from Crete, his flight and his recklessness, his rising and the sun, the fall of Icarus, and Icarus death. Though it’s a dramatic story I wanted to end on a positive note, so I added Elysium at the end, the afterlife, where he flies again :) I made a suite based on this mythology and start it all off with a prologue.