Frank Corcoran

We were sitting to tea under a cool peach-tree near Maria Rovenza´s fence when out – through it – shot a lizard at high speed ( quite near my quiet feet ) pursued by a very long snake, it also at high speed. The lizard accelerated even more.
Ditto the snake ( – ignored us completely – ) , her head held high, jaws wide open for imminent dinner. Very long and thin and mean and hungry and super-fast! Up on its
high horse, it lepped, swayed, danced, undulated, bucked and then SPRANG after the little victim which was streaking across flower-beds and terrace, hoping against hope to reach the road-gate. I grabbed a stick and, yelling, chased the chasing Schlanknatter ( Coluber Najadum ) chasing its speeding morsel. Only as I got near enough to attempt a whack did it slow down, eye me malevolently; it then dived into the roses. Where it no doubt still is, sulking, hungry. Little lizard lucky.
I´ve been asking; nobody here has ever heard of a snake speeding so fast and with the whole body bicycling up and down like something in a Disney nature-film of them fifties.
This was ” Quasi Una Visione” alright . Some snake´s hunger. Not a viper. ( – Franco killed a huge ” Viperone” down in Maria´s long grass last week. )
No hysteria ; but still it´s foot it on the cautious toe. And it´s back to shnake shticks , so it is.
More snake stories as this long, hot summer enfolds. I hope not vipers. No.

—————–

19. June 2009 Frank Corcoran pemiere ” Quasi Una Sarabanda” Octet with Ensemble “Antipodes” at Bern´s
Le Cap Arts Centr ( Predigergasse 3 ) . Swiss Radio DRS 2 ( Musik ) recorded this important premiere.

June 20. Ditto at Zürich ( The Walcheturm, Kasernareal )

June 21. Ditto at Basle´s beautiful Klingentalmuseum.

July 15. First broadcast by Radio DRS 2 ( Musik )

9 PRATOLEVA PEARLS for Solo Piano ( 2008 – 2009 )

The nineties saw my various “Mad Sweeney” compositions that were sparked off by my 1996 work for Speaker and Chamber Orchestra , ” Mad Sweeney” which used the Early Irish epic, ” Suibhne Gealt” in an English translation by the Nobel Prize-winner, Seamus Heaney .
After that came my series of “Quasi” works for various genres, including “Quasi Un Canto” for the Zagreb
Philharmonic, “Quasi Una Visione” for Ensemble Modern, also the Irish Radio commissioned ” Quasi Variations on A Mháirín De Barra ” for Solo Viola an several more. I , as a contemporary Irish composer, am
not innocent in my knowledge of how music-history has used the various genres and forms, therefore my
” quasi “, hesitant , in these pieces and their titles.
It is astonishing how difficult it is to write worth-while music today for the solo piano ( i.e. using only the key-board, deliberately excluding the sound-scape within the piano ) after the black-and-white and manifold sound explorations by eg. Bartók and Messiaen and , in our own day, Ligeti. It is very difficult to “sing” something new with those , is it, 85 chromatic tones.
My 9 piano miniatures are like pearls gleaming here in Pratoleva where I spend my Italian summers composing . As in a Webern or Berg miniature ( eg. his Pieces for Clarinet and Piano ) , each has to explore its own short-lived and strainng terse emotional world within its own short, bursting form. Brevity has to be ( musical ) wit, but also soar and lift and development and closure and polished finish.

Frank Corcoran

QUASI UN PRELUDIO for Solo Violin Frank Corcoran

I seem to divide my time nowdays between Hamburg , Dublin an Italy. I am in love with Viterbo of the Popes in Northern Lazio.
In the great heat of my sun-dappled garden last year I finished” 4 Orchestral Songs” ( Premiere N.S.O. Dublin 2010 ) , ” 9 Pratoleva Pearls ” for Solo Piano and “Quasi Un Preludio” fo Solo Piano. A good harvest.
The “Quasi” of the title positions this little miniature solo among my earlie “Quasi” series of the late nineties ( after I´d finished the ” Mad Sweeney” series ) , eg. “Quasi Un Canto” for Large Orchestra”, ” Quasi Un Pizzicato” for Wireworks Ensemble, Hamburg , the electro-acoustic “Quasi Una Missa” for West German Radio ( it won the Swedish EMS Prize in 2002 ) , “Quasi Un Concerto” for the Cantus Ensemble Zagreb, “Quasi Una Fuga” ( commissoned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra who premiered it in Limerick Cathedral as part of the 2007 Shannon Festival ) etc. , culminating in the recent Octet, “Quasi Una Sarabanda” for the Swiss Ensemle, “Antipodes” , premiered in Berne, Basel and Zürich in June 2009.
– So is this ” Quasi Un Preludio” for violin solo a prelude or a pearl from Pratoleva ? – less a Webernian miniature, more a compressed argument for the total stringiness of the soaring violin solo .
A chromatic argument , yes. Very world- and very Irish music, as this hardly two minutes of musical argument mutates into that
passionate Connamara sean-nós caoine of the Irish Famine , ” Sail ´Og Rua”.

FRANK CORCORAN : born 1944 in Tipperary, Ireland. Studied ancient languages, philosophy, theology , music in Dublin, Rome and Berlin ( composition with Boris Blacher ) .
1980 Composer Fellowship with the Berlin Artists´Programme. Since 1983 Professor in Hamburg. Many distinctions and commissions. 1989 – 90 Fulbright Professor in the U.S.A. and Guest Professor at Princeton, Harvard, Indiana, New York, CalArts, etc.
Works performed and broadcast in Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia. Member of Aosdana, the Irish Academy of the Arts.
Recent works include: Clarinet Concerto ( commission 2009 ) Violin Concerto ( 2010 ), 4 Orchestral Lieder ( National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland 2010 ) , Quasi Una Sarabanda ( Berne 2008 ), Quasi Una Fuga for String Orchestra ( 2007 ), Quasi Un Concerto ( Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra 2005 ) , Quasi Un Caoine ( N.S.O.2005 ), ” Mad Sweeney ” for Large Ensemble and Speaker ( Boston Musica Viva 2005 ) , electro-acoustic ” Tradurre – Tradire ” ( Deutschland Radio Berlin 2004 ) “Sweeney´s Vision” ( commissioned by W.D.R. 1997; Bourges Festival 1999 Premier Prix ) etc.

QUASI UNA SARABANDA Frank Corcoran

In the mid-nineties I wrote “Mad Sweeney” for Speaker and Chamber Orchestra ( to a text by the Irish Nobel Prize-winner for Literature, Seamus Heaney ) .
This sparked off the series of ” Mad Sweeney” works , including the electronic ” Sweeney´s Vision” ( a W.D.R. commission which won the 1999 Bourges Festival Premier Prix ) , came my “Quasi” works for various forces, including “Quasi Un Canto” ( Zagreb Philharmonic 2005 ), “Quasi Un Caoine ( N.S.O. 2005 ) , “Quasi Una Fuga” for 18 Strings ( Irish Chamber Orchestra 2007 ) , the electro-acoustic “Quasi Una Missa” ( W.D.R. commission; it won the 2002 Swedish E.M.S. Prize ) , ” Quasi Un Concerto” ( Cantus Ensemble 2006 ) etc.
Last year I composed “Quasi Una Sarabanda” for the Swiss Ensemble “Antipodes”. It is the most recent of my “Quasi” works. It is a sarabande, well,quasi a sarabande . I , as an Irish and ” world – composer” , am no innocent . I know too much of what art-music has been composed, at least in our European history.
Mine is a one-movement argument for ( the classical ) octet. It is a hommage to that great and sad dance – form since ( at least ) the sixteenth c. when melancoly Spanish King
Phillip shut himself up in his depressive Escorial Palace. How much great art-music ( and Irish classical Slow Airs of the ” sean nós” tradition … ) used the rhythmic scaffolding of this halting, stumbling slow three-in-the-bar ? Horn, bassoon and clarinet stumble and sway and sing and scream with the five strings.
Does my stark argument lead inexorably to the viola and violin keening in the final moments of my eleven magical minutes ? Premiere with the Octet of the “Antipodes” Ensemble this June 19 – 21 in Berne, Geneva and Basle. First recording by Radio DRS in Berne.

SOME PRATOLEVA HAIKUS :

I saw her cold eyes
I heard great goose-wings beating
Her ugly, webbed feet

Crow is scratching snow
Beak and claw and craw, black, white
Bird-eye murderous

New Year´s Day glitters
Its firt daw-glint is calving
A hoe in the cold shed

The centre, drowned,
Cannot hold, the wild geese know,
Their swirring wings know

Yes, I did enjoy greatly writing those five little texts for RTÉ´s “The Quiet Corner” plus
– trí Gaeilge- a mini-portrait of Corcoran´s Saint Patrick for Lá Le Pá¡draig 2009, all broadcast in this week of March 16 -10.
Why? Because the pen compels the typist to shape and schnitt and cut and form and weigh her words . To compose. See? I don’t have to be synaesthetic, merely symmetrical or anti- or sympathetic to this idea. Words instead of tones. Gentle wordiness in place of tonality.
See?