Frank Corcoran

FRANK CORCORAN

25 November 2011 (Friday)

4:00 pm

venue: Royal Irish Academy of Music , Dublin 2, Ireland

composer: Frank Corcoran

work: CLARINET QUINTET (premiere . RTE Commission )

and ( 2011 ) A DARK SONG ( Bass Clarinet Solo )

performer(s): Fintan Sutton ( cl. and bass cl . ), RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet.

( note: The composer will be present and will talk about his newest work. )

Yes, art can be defined.

Yet watch the context, the cultural and historical period.

Art or arts ? Which art ?

See also Horace, the Roman poet. See also ” craft ” ( as in 19th. c. ” Arts and crafts” ) . etc.

Clear the decks.

Or are we attempting a definition in this 21 st. c. ?

Where we do the defining is also important. eg. Take Ireland and, say, the contemporary art of composed

music. Why do I insist that in Ireland

still today there is hardly a concept, a definition, the possibility of defining composed musical works –

composed by Irish composers – as art,

indeed as Irish art, an art on a level with eg. Irish poetry, film, painting etc.

What are the causes of this blindness, this prejudice, this exclusion of this definition ? Are they dogmatic

? Is it lazy thinking? Could it be lack of

experiencing New Irish Music, is that it ?

Mull this over.

There have in the past been many definitions of art, of musical composition. It´s also worth reflecting a

moment on some of the things we still

today might define composing as:

sicut fumus, like smoke, ethereal – a temporal art, indeed THE time-art par excellence. Ti

me-bending, stretching, sculpting, stitching, overlapping, deluding, defying, conquering.

Composing is hope, utopian, mythic, fighting the good fight.

If “cinis aequat omnia”, still a Frank Corcoran composition will yell and shout and erect its own resistance

to John Montague´s ” – The sea of history /

Upon which we all turn / Turn and thrash / And disappear… ”

Music keens, protests, praises a fightin´ transcendence which potentially can live beyond the grave.

Certainly, music can be defined. Art can be defined.

Irish contemporary music fights for its place in defining Ireland, Irish art, Irish artists.

– After Beckett’s line in ‘‘GODOT’’:
“The light gleams an instant”

Tiocfaidh ár lá, yes, do try to hang on to this always, but especially in
the fight for The Faith against all tonight’s Benedictine blandishments.
They, I was there, tunnelled upwards from Norcia’s grand Lower Chapel,
painting their genitalless Gesù at the third curve of the tufa in (their)
eighth century.
All is not lost. Lab – ora!

So therefore: Light = Dante’s ‘‘Prime Mover’’
(-Beckett’s, too, as
it so happened).

It gleams. My violin, bass-clarinet and cello must paint that ‘‘gleeeeeee’’
in full flight and its full-mouth stop.

Genuflecting as profoundly as a Luciferian will ever now, can ever click
the knee-muscle’s innate need to worship. – Now hang on! – WHY? Why
worship?
WHICH super-knee’s what’s behind much Dantesque dishonesty, trickery, archery? Precisely Whose knee? You may laugh. It is forbidden.

What therefore cuts off its gleaming? After, after all, one instant?

We supposed it’s His Prime Mover, – okay? Now watch, ye Benedictines! – Either:

1. its ‘‘gleaming’’ (still gleaming …. ?) is cut off after it has gleamed a full instant, remember; – but by WHOM, pray?

– or: 2. Supposing the light supposes it is worth
only supposing that it gleameth for a mere nothing, a nano -nothing ,
God’s mosquito-inspiring ‘‘instant’’?
This our light therefore decides to
cease now its gleaming, mother?
( ” Whist, alanna, would you stop all your gleamin’? ” )

A kind of Old Hebrew –Irish Divine Self-definition , you guess:
‘‘I gleam that which I shall
gleam?’’

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 .
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 .

( 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
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.

Cork International Choral Festival 2012

43rd Seminar on New Choral with FRANK CORCORAN

Saturday 5th May 2012

10.00 John.Fitzpatrick: Opening address

10.05 R.C. Introductions (Paul & choir, & Frank Corcoran)

10.15 NCC Performance of FRANK CORCORAN’S “Two Unholy Haikus” Premiere of this ( Sean O Riada Prize)

10.20 Frank Corcoran on his “Two Unholy Haikus”

10.35 Paul Hillier and the NATIONAL CHAMBER CHOIR on performance perspective

10.45 Open discussion

11.00 15 minute break

REMEMBER ME !

“Remember me ! ” that age/old cry, piteous, imperious, born out of terror ,

oblivion being our threat….

Remember me in tones, bronze, the name of a lousy street, a tomb as a clarinet concerto, what else ?

Motor of art, with death a motor of religion, that which binds us.

I chisel it in , write it on water, in

the sky, all

orchestral trumpets blazing.

Change the nib.

Begin a new composition.

Oblivion will lap. Of course it will. Stoics

and Epicureans and our Buddha and

all the Celtic saints of the Burren and great , bad, indifferent workers in,

well, all the arts,

will yell quietly those four syllables.

vbg R and M and B enclose just two vowels….

Not bad.

“Le sue note sono capaci d’evocare i paesaggi da sogno dell’Isola di Smeraldo, mondi arcaici che si sposano

a magiche epopee”, così alcuni critici hanno descritto la musica del compositore irlandese Frank Corcoran.

Dopo il successo dell’esibizione nel luglio dello scorso anno, il Maestro Corcoran torna al Ridotto del

Teatro Mancinelli di Orvieto per presentare un particolare evento dedicato alla musica classica irlandese e italiana.

In programma, sabato 14 luglio alle ore 21, “Il Concerto di Dublino”.

Adele Govier (prima viola della National Simphony Orchestra di Dublino) e il pianista R.T.E. Fergal Caulfield presentano un programma misto per viola e pianoforte con opere italiane e irlandesi, tra cui Puccini, Esposito e la prima dell’opera del Maestro Corcoran dal titolo “Hot Dialogues” per viola e pianoforte. Lo stesso Maestro Corcoran partecipa al concerto introducendo le opere e i musicisti, in questo appuntamento che si annuncia come imperdibile evento per gli amanti della musica classica.

Questo il programma della serata:

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) “Nocturne” per Viola & Piano (1911)
Frank Corcoran “Hot Dialogues” (2017 – 3 Movements) prima esecuzione assoluta
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) “Foglio d’Album” (c.1910?)
Chris Corcoran “Deep Blue Windows” (2018) per Viola e Pianoforte – prima esecuzione assoluta

Luciano Berio “Wasserklavier” (1965) per Pianoforte Solo
Petr Eben (1929-2007) Fantasia sopra “Rorate Coeli” (1982) per Pianoforte Solo
Michele Esposito (1855-1929) “Tramonto ” per solo Piano, Op.61 No.3 (1912)
George Enescu(1881-1955) “Konzertstueck” per Viola e Pianoforte (1906)

2.2.2017 WGXC Radio : Frank Corcoran VIOLIN CONCERTO, QUASI UNA MISSA, TRAUERFELDER

2.3.2017 WGXC Radio : ” Cello Concerto and QUASI UNA FUGA

27.4.2017 Woodville Theatre, Gravesend, England. The Italian violinist virtuoso, Luigi De Filippi gives the English premiere of Frank Corcoran’s
SEVEN MINIATURES for Solo Violin.

IL CONCERTO DI DUBLINO – FRANK CORCORAN

27.5.2017 Irish Embassy Rome . PRATOLEVA TRIO plays

new contemporary Irish chamber music by Frank Corcoran plus Brahms, Geminiani etc. Premiere of Frank Corcoran’s new PIANO TRIO ( 2016 )

28.5.2017 Bolsena Piccolo Teatro Cavour ” ”

4.6. 2017 Dublin Hugh Lane City Gallery ” “( – plus RTE-LYRIC FM launch of new CD

“Rhapsodic Celli ” with Frank Corcoran’s CELLO CONCERTO , ” Rhapsodic Bowing” for 8 Celli etc. )

—

From: Kaleidoscope Night
To: fbcorcoran@aol.com
Sent: Thu, Oct 19, 2017 3:05 pm
Subject: Kaleidoscope Night -Pananorama -Wed 1st Nov 2017

Kaleidoscope – Pananorama –
Wed 1st Nov 2017
Doors at 8pm, music at 8.30pm €10-14 at Bello Bar.

Albeit just the 3rd concert in the 2017/2018 season, the Kaleidoscope series is already shouting about its second world premiere, would you believe? On this occasion, the new work, “Piccolo Quartetto Filarmonico”, is composed by the internationally renowned Tipperary-born composer Frank Corcoran and will be performed by the Robinson Panoramic Quartet. Kaleidoscope’s 2014 Ensemble in Residence, the Panoramic is a different kind of string quartet, comprising violin, viola, cello and double bass. Of the work, Corcoran says “the exciting drama of the musical mayhem, where the four voices are not exactly synchronized, pitted against the grave chordal liturgy, where they are….at the end, sweetness and light have the last say”.

Robinson Panoramic Quartet
MUSIC:

Frank Corcoran: “Piccolo Quartetto Filarmonico” (WORLD PREMIERE)
Performers: Robinson Panoramic Quartet

Yes, I think 1966;

I had read nothing of Stockhausen’s – often wrong – Webern analyses.

Nor did I know that Webern’s musical output was – for

that Boulez,-Goyvaerts (- who actually at the end, at his end, met me and played some Corcoran on Belgian

Radio; WHAT ? ) etc. the knees of the

compositional bee.

However I had read Stravinsky on Webern’s radical ” purity ” and I felt that his early few lonely works

before World War One –

with their fixation on his mother’s death, those high Austrian Alps and their mountain flowers, might help

my own stumble.

So I stumbled to Mittersill ( – train ? ) . I found his house, the big wide sweeping roof to deal with the

snow-storms.

Over the typical front door

were two wooden plaques with : ” Hertha Toepfer – Schneiderin ” and ” Anton Webern – Komponist “.