Sky Maze with Song Shards (1999)

This piece for oboe and harp combines two ideas found in Michael Ayerton’s novels The Testament of Daedalus and The Maze Maker, which relate the life of Daedalus, the mythical Greek inventor. In the novels the term sky-maze is used by Daedalus to describe the patterns created by the diving and swooping of birds, while the song shards are sung by his son Icarus when the two fly to Cumae. 

Sky-Maze with Song Shards begins with a quiet harp solo that was inspired by the idea of distant birds diving and swooping gradually coming into focus. When the oboe joins the music continues with gestures and shapes inspired by birds in flight, but gradually marcato fragments interrupt the flow. Eventually these fragments dominate and lead to the climax of the piece which focuses briefly on the lower registers of both instrumets for the first and only time. A short coda returns to the stratospheric register with which the piece began. 

Sky-Maze with Song Shards was commissioned by Okeanos with support from the David James Music Trust. It was premiered in the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester on 22 January 2000 by Okeanos (Jinny Shaw oboe and Lucy Wakeford harp) and is dedicated to Giles Easterbrook on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday. 

Philip Grange