Yes, a quick weekend in Venezia still heals my soul ( – I hate tourism, folk-lore, the filthy tide modern ) . Down from 200,000 to a mere fifty thousand this intrepid, water Volk, these Veneti, grand. I suppose it´s our constant nearness to the lagoon water under the bed, under the kitchen-sink, those intrepid boatsmen choreographers, kinetic art over and above all the 20th. c. galleries high-pokered, Venice as a Villanova village on evolving stilts, a world-power wading in Byzantine , Greek, Jeruslem blood.
POST VENEZIA POST
April 10 2012. High Point University .
J.W.Turner, solo cello:
Frank Corcoran:
SUITE FOR VIOLONCELLO 1972
“This is a set of 6 miniatures that , with their profoundly lyrical moments punctuated by terse chords or expectant pauses, reflect the same Hibernian poesy and elusive fragments that characterize Frank Corcoran´s prose. See his blog, for example, in the article ” Just To Prove That I Am Not Yet Paralysed” he writes: “Treachery is ubiquitous in language, in memory, in blogging perception, whether the words and tones are self-referential or only half so. My Cello Solo Suite I wrote in 1972. Did I ? Sure, it was influenced by Bach, Kodaly, Henze, that over-blown Reger. No art without the past… ” “
Make the Melody Clear
This here is not a grabble, nor yet a grapple, a blog or log or even e-mooing.
I write it for myself ( and my eavesdrippers, certainly )and to myself, seeking clarity through doing, I mean writing, formulating these thoughts and musical thoughts and work-in-progress and also examining my ( others? Own up ! ) thrust to The Mirror, Narcissus At The Surface, what I am “up to” mentally and compositionally. Eavesdrip by all means ( legal, please ). Welcome all scopological e-readers, peeping Thomasinas…
CLEAR AS MUD
Yes, that last entry cam e from Jocelyn Braddell, The Handstand for March 2005 ” RTE Living Music Festival”.
Humph. How time changeth. Et nos mutamur in illo. Humph
EIGHT SHORT YEARS GONE NOW – WHITHER ?
Frank Corcoran with acerbic wit and his persistent artistic excitement gave a talk, and an introduction to the Electronic Music performances that were hopefully recorded and can be relished in the future. Corcoran’s Quasi una Visione cast its vision over Irish history effectively and is a classic performance that enables references, almost pictures, of the fertile struggle that eclipsed this small nation for so many centuries and notates for us the logo of Sweeney or “the mad Irish”. Unusual individuals were forced during our history to react in the face of violent suppression that could not be overturned, a history of colonialism that was eventually terminated in the South of the island, but there again,in the early 1900’s, by extraordinary individuals. His material seems to describe this long history receding into memory, despite it’s stubborn pace, and the gradual understanding that the Irish realise. Though Ireland may now be celebrated by parade and percussion, it is nevertheless the individual, sometimes in solitude, unrecognised, who is still pushing open the doors of knowledge and creative life – to quote Corcoran himself: “At the end high piano and harp and glassy wind-chimes and tambourine say it all.”
ALAS THERE IS MORE
Most clement clime, this Dé h-Aoine 1. 2012, neither aspis nor adder. Wherefore plaint, meine soule ?
( I quote Ezra Pound here- proves my point exquisitely , see below )
” I ? I ? I ? ” ( – A Lume Spento) I Pound´s fine line eg.
B/Pathos – who shall riddle me this ? Pound´s or mine ? Cor Inquietum ? Just faxed St. Augustine´s mother, saintly Monica, she the stately, proud, thankfully still mother of a lot of our Western woes. Still. Silentium. Ciúnas, a Mhonica !? Be still also , my texting text-soul.
Apparently the Violin Concerto is high ´n dry. The mighty, newly emerging, Cello Concerto bursts its cardiographic arteries symphonic, A Great Song in four mighty symphonic movements, my GREAT Soloist, Cellista, sweat-dripping.
THERE IS MORE
Dawn´s fingers definitely rosy, I mull on here. Apparently nothing ( that´s right, no thing nor Thing ) can anchor me here in my existence, in my split consciousness ( – certainly I am here, feet of sand, head in the clouds, pen racing, memory fit as a fiddle; but also not here ) as mull becomes blog becomes blur becomes no thing. So that´s my First Song ( in the Violin Concerto this upandcoming November 2 ) in the newly shaping Cello Concerto. What´s its Second Song of Cosmic Indifference, I wonder ? Is it eg. ” Oh she led us a pretty daunce, I´m telling you ” or ” Our little lives are rounded by a sleep” or ” Hear my song of now, of the high hills, of the high A – string, pure gush… ” ? Time will tell. After the dawning.
” ICH HABE UNSONST GELEBT”
” I have lived in vain” ( Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau ). What could this mean ? What could it have meant( to him )? How do I live “in vain” ? And this perfect tense ?
Put it thus: what tone, chord, line, musical concept, great arch-form or miniature Pratoleva Pearl can “redeem” me? From having ( watch this ) lived in vain, from continuing to do so? Which wider project, transcend-ental or-ing, or world acclaim or polar prizes or self-mined bedrock or higher belief or outside-the-cosmos Person(s) or super Super Being might rescue me from that feeling of cosmic, well, indifference? Is that it? Is it this? ( I must re-thumb my Ecclesiasticus when dawn has come )
LEIPZIG IS WORTH A BASS-CLARINET
27. May 2012 Leipzig Opera
German Premiere of Frank Corcoran´s
” A DARK SONG” for Bass Clarinet
( Volker Hemken )
MORE MAY IS COMING
At glorious dawn I finished; consumatum est, four mighty movements, A Mighty Song, the cello solo in all movements soaring, diving, ascending, hymning on highest A – string, in the tawny depths of the lowest C- string, double or quadruple-stopping and dancing or keening or suspended high above massed wind-chords and rhapsodically bowed strings, all percussion searing or sighing ( brake-drums would – and will – waken the dead; Michaelangelo and Signorelli´s never even heard of them. How could they, poor things ? ) . I take the mighty orchestra mighty handy – there´s plenty of bass clarinet and double bassoon and bass tuba etc. , but not so as to cover up our mighty bass-barytone ; Fischer-Dieskau may be dead – all that we saw was his shadow under her shield- but I sing on through the bow and the wood and the strings astray . The mighty shout. Our hymn to what ? Cantilena and chant win. High art.