Mae'r Mari Lwyd Yn Curo (A Symphonic Poem for Orchestra)

Mae’r Mari Lwyd Yn Curo is a symphonic poem that reimagines the Mari Lwyd, the spectral horse‑skull figure of Welsh winter tradition, as an elemental presence arising from the sea. 

The work begins within a submerged watery sound‑world: slow tidal movements, distant glimmers and glints, hints of half heard or remembered sea shanties, 

and a slow low murmur that suggests something ancient stirring beneath the waves. 

As the Mari Lwyd awakens from her slumbers, gradually takes form and moves toward the land, the music gathers momentum...

The scene shifts: a gallop through an eerie forest under a full moon, the rush of cold night air, wind gusting through bare branches, and the unsettling rattle of bones sounding from somewhere unseen. 

The landscape is alive, watchful, and charged with silvery strange nocturnal energy.

Eventually, the Mari Lwyd arrives at a grand, warmly lit gothic manor. She knocks loudly upon the door, and the music becomes a dance; a medieval dance transforms into a frenetic waltz, which in turn fragments into music upon the edge of chaos. The knocking persists within the tumult, as if the Mari Lwyd is everywhere at once: both outside the door in the frozen winter night and inside within the heat of the dance.

Score

Demo Recording

"I see it all, as divers see what is going on above them, through a medium, dense, rippling, but to me, transparent." 

From Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu 

Mari Lwyd, Lwyd Mari:

 

A sacred thing through the night they carry.

Betrayed are the living, betrayed the dead:

All are confused by a horse's head.

From The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd by Vernon Watkins

For know there are two worlds of life and death:

One that which thou beholdest; but the other

Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit

The shadows of all forms that think and live

Till death unite them and they part no more....

From Prometheus Unbound by P. B. Shelley