I named this piece after Daedalus, the mythical inventor. Two inventions of his in particular inspire the piece: his famous wings made from feathers and wax that he and his son Icarus used to flee the island of Crete, and the labyrinth he constructed for King Minos' Minotaur. In the breathy, highly contrapuntal opening, filled with unpitched sounds, bustling textures and the emergence of pitch, I envision a kind of mythical construction taking place.
The emergence of harmony across all five instruments closes the first large group of the piece and sets the stage for a work concerned with contrasts between mechanical unpitched outbursts and atmospheric sonorities and textures.
