Cri de Merlin has been performed in Brussels, Bucharest, Chatham, Crest, Karlsruhe, São Paulo, St Gallen, Vienna, Vorst and Wrocław…

Tribute to CG Jung

Fog, clouds
Density. Small shapes emerging slowly, shyly
Shimmering motifs revealing themselves, imperfect, choatic, elliptical
“Golden chains from star to star”

Fog, clouds, dissipating
Breathing, singing
An open space

A cauldron
Muffled screams, dull pain
Crawling, bitter, rough
Cynical, evil laughs

A breath, freed
From the obscurity of the deep
Lightness, ample

Calm, the small shapes are emancipating, moving freely
Playful, rocking; melancholic colours.
The inward gaze is scanning
the near, the far, the vastness

Crawling, slowly
The density of screams

Calmness. Stillness. Floating.
Soothed
Soft imprints, abandoned

In other words. The title of this piece is a reference to the works of CG Jung. I did not attempt to appropriate his ideas, but the music was inspired by them, simply. My creative process was guided by imagining the movements of sounds in a real environment, with attention devoted to the temporal dimensions of the events.

A structuring, symbolic environment to make sense of the movements and create near/far situations, opening or closing the space of mental pictures, here soothing the ear, there opening the soul to the vastness.

A mix of heterogenous timbres and materials, changes of states, going from the “fog/cloud,” an environment teeming with tiny beings, through the “cauldron/crawling” environment, toward the playful, songful “freed breath” environment with its freer spatialized movements. Moments of “standby” and moments of appeasement alternate with the climaxes of the “scream.”

— Ingrid Drese [English translation: François Couture, i-24]

Cri de Merlin [Merlin’s Scream] was realized in 2013 and revised in 2016 at the composer’s studio in Brussels (Belgium), and was premiered on October 23, 2013 at the concert Orkiestra Głośników: Nowe szaty symfonii presented at Akademii Sztuk Pięknych in Wrocław (Poland) as part of the Musica Electronica Nova festival. This work was realized with support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (Administration générale de la culture, Service de la musique). Cri de Merlin was awarded a mention at the Ars Electronica Forum Wallis (Leuk, Switzerland, 2020).