That's a hard one to talk about.

Le Manoir de Cecilian (Cecilian's Manor) is the logical sequel to Cecilian (1996). As the first one was an impersonation of childhood, the second one deals with teenage years.

Three years have passed, that induce a lot of differences as there are between ages of 10 and 13.

I wanted these differences to sound in the music itself. This is why I decided to work on a very different basis than usual and undertook a three-part structure, three long movements divided in short tracks linked by fluent transitions.

My model was this time Mike Oldfield's works, especially his Tubular Bells series (especially the second opus).

​

It's been a very long and hard work, that took me a year and a half to achieve it on paper. In 1999, I had not my computer yet and was still recording on tape, so I wasn't able to play Le Manoir as I wanted. I had to play the short parts one after the others, and couldn't link them as I intented to, because I wasn't able to edit the songs to make them just one and same big movement.
The definitive version (so far) was mastered in 2002. I added sound effects that tell a bit more of stories around the music, and yet Le Manoir was achieved.

​

It's probably my most ambitious and complex work. The one I should be the most proud of - but it's not. Not really. The story behind the music has been so intense and umpredictable, even it was quite short, that I still find difficult today to set it apart from the music.

More, in the way I conceived it, this music may be the most cerebral I ever wrote. I'm not someone so cerebral, to be honest. I prefer instinct, intuition and feelings.

So I'm still in pain to enjoy Le Manoir in the way it should deserve it.

​

I'd like to remake this one as well as many others. I'll probably try to replay it, hoping to deliver at least the deepest emotions lying in the music.

We'll see if it's possible, so many years after the story that inspired it is over.