Frank Corcoran

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK’S DAY

MARCH 17 2019

Church of Christ and St. Stephen in Manhattan 120 West 69th. Street

NORTH SOUTH CONSONANCE ORCHESTRA Cond. Maz Lifchitz .

Premiere : Frank Corcoran QUASI UN CLARINET CONCERTO ( Frank Corcoran at 75. )

0:00 Prisma Musik
Thema: Kleine Schule des musikalischen Hörens
Frank Corcoran hört das Cellokonzert von Edward Elgar
“Elgars langsame Passagen zerreißen mich innerlich gerade … Es ist wie das Destillat einer Träne”, gestand Jacqueline du Pré einmal, die vielleicht berühmteste Interpretin dieses Werks. Kurz nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg entstand das Cellokonzert, das man einmal die “Elegie auf eine untergegangene Zivilisation” genannt hat, in der ländlichen Abgeschiedenheit seines Landhauses in Sussex. Das Werk markiert gleichsam den Gegenpol zu “Pomp and Circumstance” in Elgars Schaffen, eine Musik des Abschieds, verhaltener und sparsamer in den Mitteln als alle Orchesterwerke der Vorkriegszeit.

20:00 Nachrichten, Wetter

22:00 Variationen zum Thema
Musikbeispiele zum Themenabend
Edward Elgar:
Konzert für Violoncello und Orchester e-Moll op. 85
Steven Isserlis, Violoncello
Philharmonia Orchestra London
Leitung: Paavo Järvi
Klavierquintett a-Moll op. 84
Pihtipudas Kvintetti
Frank Corcoran:
Cellokonzert
Martin Johnson, Violoncello
RTE National Symphony Orchestra
Leitung: Gavin Maloney

1.

The cold Cistercian

Dreamt of red Bardolino

His nose all purple

2.

“M’illumino, si,

D’immenso !” il poeta

Tremulando….

Do not weaken or waver.
Keep going.
Hear the musical forms.
Write them for a potential audience.
But first write for me. For inner hearing. For the serenity of meaning . Value. Only then make:
A Confession In The Cold Glasblaeser

Perhaps there NEVER, ever was even a modest wave of support , understanding or acceptance here for New Music in our 20 c.
? Perhaps all you had was those brave
moral heroes of the Second Viennese School before the Nazi thirties ? ( Schoenberg’s hasty departure, Berg’s early death and Webern’s total lonely
loon in his Austrian Alps ? )

Since then you had (im)modest little footlings of composers in Munich and Berlin , WDR’s blandishments in the sixties and seventies ( I am bracketing out Poland and Paris here, also Ligeti’s Luck ) ?

Certainly here in Ham and in Burg the woeful few Hogskool Concerts in my eighties and nineties were not to be trusted … But one was thankful for the few thrown crusts.
And I remember well all those well-meaning “Schulmusik” publications and books on New Music In The Schools etc., mostly pap.

Perhaps.

And NO kind of understanding percolating down to your intellectual, to a public or private ; no acceptance of these lonely heroes, no kind of parallel at all with , say, the
accepted development of pictorial arts or literary productions or avant-garde theatre, let alone film .

The world-ocean of musical bilge and cowardly media contributed , certainly. No journalist prepared to call a spade a spade, popular shit as sonic shit. Seldom
analytic light cast on the marketing of punks and pricks and rocks and cunts and pricks and raps , whether American or helots.

A bit bleak .

Frank Corcoran

CELLO CONCERTO

For years I´d wanted to compose a Concerto for Cello and big orchestra – my singing David against its mighty Goliath . But I didn´t trust myself to face what
is, yes,
a mighty challenge until I´d first composed my Violin Concerto which Christopher Warren-Green premiered with the NSO and great soloist, Alan Smale, in
Nov. 2012 .
I’d worked closely with Alan as he prepared his Concerto ; his advice to me , the composer, was ” Frank, SING IT !” And this same advice was vital
as, one year later, I began work on this even bigger Corcoran Concerto for the mighty cello – bow of Martin Johnson.

This four movement work has even greater proportions ; this
solo instrument has to face an even bigger orchestral battle .

It sings and soars, somewhere between Dvorak ´s and Lutoslawski´s epic works.

The opening reveals a broad gesture for trumpets and brass which will
return several times , quasi a ” motto” theme.
My Slow Movement would tear the heart out of you, the cello´s beautiful cantilena weaving, sobbing,
dying.
The searing Scherzo, with its huge battery of percussion is the most violent music I ever wrote….
The music winds down then in the last, meditative finale.

Thomas Aquinas SUMMA THEOLOGICA

1. 3. Introd. ” e Deo scire non possumus ”

quid sit !” ( ” Concerning God we cannot know WHAT (S)He is ” …. )

In my three full theologian’s years in Roma at the ( most Papal ) Universita del

Laterano, my magic years there were 1961 – 64

nobody ever, ever, ever pointed this God-text out. To me.

Why ?

After Bartok , Ligeti and Lutoslawski how can I write something hot and strange ?

On May 1. 2019 I will be SEVENTY FIVE . My new quartet aims for tension, unity. How ?

Easy.

Difficult.

Everything must flow from

the opening bar of Mov. 1. , ” Allegro irascibile ma nobile ” .

Bar One’s motiv yells for an electric tautness from each instrument. Each uses the same “Corcoran notes” ( G . A flat . C sharp and D ) .

– My Leitmotiv provides the building-blocks for my entire first movement ;

each phrase. each ainstrumental colour and tonal region,all my derived motivs ,

these musical protests or denials, they must all come out of that Bar One ?

Yes, my architectural ideal here is that of the great string quartets , Stravinsky’s Three Pieces , Webern , Schoenberg and Alban Berg
….Late Beethoven.

Movement Two is a play of those naughty pizzicati quintuplets versus arco chords, a celebration of these melodies which I weave out of ( my ?) Frank Corcoran 7 -Note Sca

Movement Three is marked “Allegro Barbaro ” and ” feroce e ruvidissimo ” .

The throbbing dyads shift and interlock , descend or ascend,- they saw the torture.

High voltage. Kinetic art. Take your pick. Guantanamo or Gethsemane .

Hi Frank.

Here is our definitive programme for Orvieto MANCINELLI THEATRE and Bolsena PICCOLO TEATRO CAVOUR :

Lily Boulanger- Nocturne

Frank Corcoran- Hot Dialogues

Esposito- Alba

Chris Corcoran- Deep Blue Windows

Puccini- Foglio d’Album

Petr Eben- Fantasy for Viola and organ (arr. for piano)

Enescu- Concertstuck.

I hope this is Ok.

By our calculations this is c.55 mins of music.

John Cage (1912-1992): Concert for prepared piano and chamber orchestra (1951), Fourteen (1940), Concert for piano and orchestra (1958), 4:33 (1962), Imaginary Landscape IV und V (1951), Rocks (1984), Suite for Toy Piano (1948)
Herbert Callhoff (*1933): Tombeau für Sopran und Ensemble (2005)
Elliott Carter (*1908): Our Challenge and our Love (1995), Liumen für Ensemble (1997), A Mirror on which to dwell (1975), Inner Song für Oboe solo (1982)
Benet Casablancas (*1956): New epigramms for chamber orchestra (1997)
Friedrich Cerha (*1926): Acht Sätze nach Hölderlin-Fragmenten für Streichsextett (1995), Catalogue des objets trouvés (1969), jahrlang ins ungewisse hinab für großes Ensemble (1995/96), Musik für Posaune und Streichquartett (2004)
Niccolo Castiglioni (*1932): Consonante, für Flöte und Kammerorchester (1962), Gymel des objets trouvés für Flöte und Klavier (1969)
Christof Cech (*1960): Adam für zwei Violoncelli und Klavier
Hae-Kyung Choi (*1964): Stimmung für zwei Trompeten, Horn, Posaune und Tuba (1996/2002; Denis Cohen (*1952): Doppi versi la luna (1989/90)
Frank Corcoran (*1944): Concertini of Ice für Ensemble (1993) UA
Chaya Czernowin (*1957): Lovesong for mixed ensemble (2010)

Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin
10–13 April 2019

Music Current 2019 programme online

Dear Friends,

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.