Finalist of the ÉLAN Award 2025World Premiere by the Orchestre national d’île-de-France conducted by Yalda Zamani on June 17, 2025 in CENTQUATRE-PARIS, as part of ManiFeste-2025 festival, in partnership with the Maison de la Musique Contemporaine, the Durand-Salabert-Eschig publishing house / Universal Music
IRCAM recording Julien Pittet
The piece NEKYIA is based on fears from my childhood, and fear in general, that I’ve always associated with particular sounds in my mind. It’s connected to the following story: When I was three years old, I was left alone in a room for a few minutes one evening. In the dark, I suddenly noticed my younger sister’s stroller, which at that moment reminded me of a man dressed entirely in black. I screamed immediately, and my mother came. From then on, I kept having the same fear.
In this piece, I orchestrated exactly the sounds from my mind that would arise in moments of fear or from the unconscious. I believe my compositional language has generally developed from these fears. I call such sounds the sounds of my unconscious. Later, I connected this fear-creature to the term “Nekyia” from Greek mythology, which was also used by C. G. Jung as an integral part of his analytical psychology. These are mostly wave-like structures across various musical and sonic parameters, which evoke an inner restlessness – or result from my own inner restlessness. In the piece, these waves alternate with the motif of a minor third in the tubular bells, violins, and other instruments, which is associated with a lullaby and attempts to dispel the fear.