Frank Corcoran

STILL LIFE WITH GUITAR

Emma Coulthard, flute – Michael McCartney, guitar

The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

Sunday, 17 March 2013, 1 p.m.

In celebration of the shared Celtic heritage of Wales and Ireland, Still Life with Guitar would like to invite you to an exciting free concert of new music for flute and guitar, including works by Welsh composers Mervyn Burtch and Peter Reynolds, plus, for the first time in Britain,

works by Irish composers Frank Corcoran, Martin O’Leary and John Buckley.

2Attached Images

MUSING :

Another year, ( another train-ride up from Orvieto to Mestre. )

Perhaps it is the colours the eye wants
. Or the swoosh and whoosh and gear-changing boats’ clutches that clutch my ear.
Not so much the usual Jesuit confessor’s cry : ” since September 2015, my son, how many times ? Tones ?

Musical works I have just crafted included the Piano Trio ( with viola ) of last winter 2016, in Hamburg,then the
gestating Clarinet Concerto,
my delightful 8 Duetti Irlandesi for Piano and Cello
which had, face it, haunted me for a long time ,
also the cello solo piece, ” Rhapsodietta Joyceana ” .
The Arena RTE Interview convinces.
The autumn 2016 RTE programme, ” New Cross-currents ” , also.
Venice next Sunday should bring be colours and time to situate myself a little. Walk. Dawdle. Sounds and sky.
Certainly form matters, the opening strings
‘ rhythmicized chord before the soloist lifts off / in the new Clarinet Concerto for new York 2019 .
A dreamed fragment or a motivic phrase.
I am not to blame for the
musical world’s GREAT mess. No.
So after my death in Venice, release this :
Life was harsh. Hands up those for whom it was not? More help, any help, would have been a great help; a little bitty praise, un poco ” notice” was a sin .
It would have been easy before my death to perform the ( very good ) TENORLIEDER, my massive , choral EIGHT HAIKUS ,
“stunning ” was the I FC M’s International Jury’s word in awarding me their 2013 Premier Prix. m
It would.
It wasnìt to be at all, either snobs or yobs were blocking, blatant incompetence and ignorance . The worst, indifference.
We are bet in the Irish national schools and in the university music-departments and somewhere in between. Bhi an
ceart ag an bPiarsach, ‘ swounds !
So the self and its shadows nimbly snake on , continue to block or embrace or question or accompany each other .
Till death us do part.
Musical death, no doubt, before that, the death of desire and passion to continue the noble slog, the composer as
coal-miner.
Twas nobler in the mind. Release this jumble, certainly. Much good.
Reply Reply All Forward

MUSIC CURRENt 2019

Dublin Sound Lab is pleased to announce the Music Current 2019 festival programme is now online –

www.musiccurrent.ie

Considered as the ‘Fringe’ of Irish new music festivals, Music Current is a platform for the newest contemporary music, hosting five concerts over four days.
Now in its fourth year, the festival programme has a decidedly theatrical flavour, featuring Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s concert-length masterwork Sideshow, in which Swiss Ensemble Tzara ‘perform’ in the theatrical sense.

The theatrical theme continues with another Swiss group Retro Disco who take inspiration from Dadaist aesthetics to create absurdist performances.

The festival opens with a double-bill programme:

” SWEENEY LIVES ” featuring three major ‘radiophonic’ work by Irish electronic music pioneer Frank Corcoran

– from the TERRIBLE THIRTY SONETTS 2018

The Bard of Orvieto’s flummoxed flat !
How stop this Irish flow of sonatinas ?
Wrong ! They’re sonnets,let’s be clear on that,
Distinct as , say, melodeons ‘n concertinas !

Lips and air and lungs and concepts long
Or short , revisions fashioned poem, ditty.
Who’s to say I’ve chosen clearly wrong
This verbal pyrotechnic, seldom witty ….

I bend time here and spoken word or wit
-ty composition , yes, a pity,
should I die before I’ve shot my bolt .

Stop the clock ! Stop its tat for tit !
I’ll finish this verse-play, ass- or horse-play, shitty.
Yes, Art is play for donkey, dolt and colt ….

New works by Frank Corcoran

performed in Italy this summer

Frank Corcoran, who divides his time between Hamburg and Italy, will introduce two concerts in Orvieto in

Umbria and Bolsena featuring his work.

The performers are three of Frank’s friends from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra – cellist Martin Johnson, violist Adele Johnson, and pianist Fergal Caulfield.

The programme will include piano trios from Schubert, Brahms, David Popper, and the first three movements from Frank Corcoran’s new work, 8 Irish Duets for Cello and Piano. Based on Irish slow airs, the composer describes them as being, “neither neo-romantic settings, nor neo-Bartok, nor neo-minimalist and yet neo-Corcoran.”

The concerts take place at the Teatro Mancinelli, Orvieto, on 31 July, and a similar programme in Bolsena’s Piccolo Teatro Cavour on 2 August.

In other news, a book on the composer entitled FESTSCHRIFT FRANK CORCORAN

and edited by Hans Dieter Gruenefeld will be launched this autumn in Dublin.

FUENF HAIKUS

Frank Corcoran ( 2014 )

Five dogs or seven Fuenf Hunde, sieben,
Snarl in the cold April air Bellen im kalten April:
Barking: ” Kill the Spring !” “Toetet den Fruehling !”

Who goes here ? – Summer! Wer ist’s ? – Der Sommer.
My pen moves on white paper…. Stift schreibt auf weissem Papier.
Soft horns . Clarinets. Klarinettenmusik

Bits if sticky sleep. Der Schlaf noch klebend
( My eye tries to see itself ) Das Aug will sich selbst anglotzen
Morning-birds chitter. Morgenvoegel, zwitschert.

Suppose God is light ? Ob Gott doch Licht sei ?
A mountain’s shadow purple ? Ist der Bergschatten purpur ?
” Ciunas, a h-anaim !” Sei still, o Seele!

Whisper “Tramonto ” – ” that sunset” “Sonnenuntergang”
Tiptoes through this , my window. Wispernd durch mein Fenster
– Well, is this , then, death ? Ist dies dann der Tod ?

A COLD DECEMBER IN HAMBURG , MUSING :

The trouble is the flute –

I’ve heard too many Flatterzunges of the ” avant WHAT ” of those sixties, Gazzeloni and other giants excellent

blowers of just WHAT for young

Stockhausen ( awful ! ) and breathy young Boulez ( wasn’t much better on the quick-ear ) and other fluted

others.

My ” IT SOARED A BIRD” re-entered terrain I’d swore I’d never again .

So each of my 3 short movements must be unashamedly different, over-theatrical, yet keep the sigh in a tiny

interval, the memory of an archetype, a suggestion of sweet or sour.

No neo – anything ; my mighty flute phrases striding, my ( as usual ) orchestrally thought pianoforte.

Mov. 1 with its modest
Irish tin-whistle of my early Tipperary fifties and its Debussyan ” Tres Mod’er’e ”
.
My Alto Flute in Mov. 2 sobs and swings and startles with its still
fresh chromatic notes and appoggiaturas , its lows and highs.

In Mov.3 I ( once again ) have to conquer the Standard Bartokian Model with fast, driving, repeated
piano chords, the piccolo unleashed, high and cruel, its highest registers conquered.

“IT SOARED A BIRD” for Flutes ( including Tinwhistle ) and Piano.
No bad self-discipline at all, a few sleeplessnesses.

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin

10–13 April 2019

Dublin Sound Lab is pleased to announce the Music Current 2019 festival programme is now online –

www.musiccurrent.ie

Considered as the ‘Fringe’ of Irish new music festivals, MUSIC CURRENT is a platform for the newest contemporary music, hosting five concerts over four days.

ow in its fourth year, the festival programme has a decidedly theatrical flavour

The festival opens with a double-bill programme: SWEENEY LIVES !

featuring three major ‘radiophonic’ work by Irish electronic music pioneer, FRANK CORCORAN , plus a trio of

composer/performers from German collective Stock11, one of the most thought provoking music groups performing

today.

Dear God ,

– Anglosaxon , Celtic, Old-Turkish , okay,

Language buckles and bends as I pray : ” May Ulrich Leyendecker now rest – with Thee – at YOUR right shoulder

. his troubled life and his great

compositional vision and instrumental surge ( Oh YES ! )

existing now and ” Now ” for ever . With You, God ( – Capital letters , Si ! ) ”

Your old ( a ) theistic servant in the ( composers ) vineyard of the Lord…. ”

23 June 2018

– Trinity College Chapel, Dublin

Orla Flanagan, conductor

2018 marks the 21st anniversary of Mornington Singers. We celebrated this milestone and our twenty-one year history with a concert featuring some of our favourite music from over the years, and were delighted to have a number of our former members join us in an encore.

William Byrd: Sing joyfully

Colin Mawby: Alleluia, Christus resurrexit

Rhona Clarke: Regina coeli

Frank Corcoran: Caoine