Titan

Nicknames for musical works often stick. In an early version, Gustav Mahler once called his First Symphony Titan, after the novel of the same name by the Romantic poet Jean Paul. He later withdrew this name. The literary influences in his First were too diverse, as were the folk music quotations and inspirations, even from the visual arts. As he later put it in another context, Mahler intended to depict an ‘entire world’ with his first symphony. A truly titanic ambition. The mythical figures Daedalus and Icarus, flying towards the sun on wax wings, also wanted to transcend the limits of humanity. Geoffrey Gordon's new clarinet concerto Icarus follows this flight of fancy – and crash. In Salt, his ‹Bonus Track›, Gordon also depicts Daedalus' much less well-known warning to his son not to get too close to the salty waves.