Frank Corcoran

Haikus in der Kathedrale:

Frank Corcoran erhält den Seán Ó Riada Preis 2012

Frank Corcoran erhält den Seán Ó Riada Preis 2012. Foto: Hans-Dieter Grünefeld
(nmz) –

Ein substanzielles Sujet für zeitgenössische Chormusik zu finden, erfordert ein Sensorium für Stimmen und stimmhafte Befindlichkeiten.
Zumal in sakraler Umgebung, zumal im katholisch, aber eben auch keltisch geprägten Irland. Da findet Musik manchmal in musikalischen Zwischenwelten statt. So beim Cork International Choral Festival mit dem Seán Ò Riada Composition Competition.

02.05.2012 – Von Hans-Dieter Grünefeld

Zu diesem Wettbewerb müssen Komponisten, deren Wohnsitz oder Geburtsort in Irland ist, unter einem Pseudonym Originale für einen a cappella Chor einreichen, um zu gewährleisten, dass nicht die Person, sondern nur die künstlerische Qualität beurteilt wird.

Im Jahr 2012 waren es dreiunddreißig Werke, und eine Expertenjury entschied sich,
“Two Unholy Haikus” von Frank Corcoran mit dem ersten Preis auszuzeichnen, weil “sie den Sängern gefallen werden – und das ist sehr wichtig”.
Außerdem zeigen sie “einen genuinen Sinn für gute Gestaltung und Humor”.

Eigenschaften, die auch der Namenspatron des Wettbewerbs gehabt haben muss. Denn ebenso wie Frank Corcoran war Seán Ó Riada, geboren 1931 als John Reidy in Cork und in London 1971 gestorben, ein klassisch gebildeter, kosmopolitisch erfahrener Komponist mit Avantgarde-Ambitionen.
Auch Seán Ó Riada lebte als Musiker zwischen verschiedenen Kulturwelten, indem er maßgeblich die Authentizität irischer Folklore popularisierte.

Alte Sprachen, Theologie und Musik studierte Frank Corcoran, geboren 1944 in Tipperary, in Dublin, Rom und Berlin, bevor er Professor für Komposition in Hamburg wurde.
Die (keltische) Geschichte Irlands und Poesie europäischer Literaten sind wichtige Themen seiner Kompositionen.
Das unbedingt Humane sucht Frank Corcoran auch in kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit dem Erbe der Religion, exemplarisch in den selbst verfassten “Two Unholy Haikus” (lyrische Kurzform in drei Zeilen aus Japan),
die sakrale und profane Aspekte im Titel verbinden.

Die Premiere der “Two Unholy Haikus” mit dem National Chamber Choir of Ireland, Leitung: Paul Hillier, wird am 4. Mai 2012 in der St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork, bei Anwesenheit des Komponisten stattfinden. In einem Seminar über neue Chormusik wird dieses Werk am folgenden Sonntag im Stack Theatre diskutiert.

Moderne Vokalmusik hat in Cork ungebrochene Tradition.
Weiterführende Informationen:
Cork International Choral Festival

Website Frank Corocoran

Twitter logo

FRANK CORCORAN

Life

“I came late to art music; childhood soundscapes live on. The best work with imagination/intellect must be exorcistic-laudatory-excavatory. I am a passionate believer in “Irish” dream-landscape, two languages, polyphony of history, not ideology or programme. No Irish composer has yet dealt adequately with our past. The way forward – newest forms and technique (for me especially macro-counterpoint) – is the way back to deepest human experience.”[2]

Born in Borrisokane, County?Tipperary, Corcoran studied at Dublin, Maynooth (1961–4), Rome (1967–9) and Berlin (1969–71), where he was a pupil of Boris?Blacher. He was a music inspector for the Irish government Department of Education from 1971 to 1979, after which he took up a composer fellowship from the Berlin?Künstlerprogramm (1980–1). He has taught in Berlin (1981), Stuttgart (1982) and Hamburg, where he has been professor of composition and theory in the Staatliche?Hochschule?für?Musik?und?darstellende?Kunst (1983–2008). He was a visiting professor and Fulbright?scholar at the University?of?Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the U.S. in 1989-90 and has been a guest lecturer at, among others, CalArts, Harvard?University, Princeton?University, Boston?College, New?York?University, and Indiana?University.[3]

Corcoran has been a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of creative artists, since its inception in 1983.

He was the first Irish composer to have had a symphony premiered in Vienna (1st Symphony, Symphonies of Symphonies of Wind, in 1981).[4]

Corcoran lives in Germany and Italy.

Music

In the late 1970s, Corcoran developed a technique he calls “macro-counterpoint”. Related to similar approaches by Witold?Lutos?awski and György?Ligeti, it “refers to the contrapuntal treatment of layers of sound as opposed to the traditional focus of the intervallic compatibility of one line with another”[5] as in traditional counterpoint. The first composition in which he applied this technique was the Piano Trio (1978). Here, the three instruments each form an independent layer of sound, moving at their own speed and in individual time signatures, numbers of bars, etc. The individual lines remain transparent throughout. At specific points in the score, the musicians are asked to pause in order to start again simultaneously.[6]

Corcoran’s strong identification with his Irish heritage has led to many compositions inspired by Celtic Irish mythology, and modern Irish literature. A series of works in various genres written between 1996 and 2003 focus on the life of “Mad Sweeney”, a minor 7th-century king from the north of Ireland who is the subject of the ancient Irish tale Buile?Shuibhne. Many other works also have an Irish focus, including the choral Nine Medieval Irish Epigrams (1973), the percussion piece Music for the Book of Kells (1990) and some works referring to the work of Irish writers James?Joyce, Samuel?Beckett, Gabriel?Rosenstock, and Seamus?Heaney.

Another series of works with titles beginning on the word “Quasi …”, written since 1999 (on-going), highlights and interprets concepts such as visions or musical forms and expressions such as concertino, lamento, fuga, sarabanda, pizzicato, etc. which serve as both inspiration for the music and as creative raw material.
Awards

Corcoran has won a number of awards throughout his career. Recent awards include:

Feis Ceoil Prize, 1973
Varming Prize, 1974
Dublin Symphony Orchestra Prize, 1975
Studio Akustische Kunst, Cologne, in 1995 (for Joycepeak Music)
Bourges International Electro-acoustic Music Competition, 1999 (for Sweeney’s Vision)
EMS Prize, Stockholm, 2002 (for Quasi Una Missa)
Sean Ó Riada Memorial Prize at the Cork International Choral Festival, 2011
First Prize Outright of the International Foundation for Choral Music, 2013 (for 8 Haikus)

Selected compositions

Orchestral

Symphony No. 1 (1980)
Symphony No. 2 (1981)
Concerto for String Orchestra (1982)
Symphony No. 3 (1994)
Mikrokosmoi (1994)
Symphony No. 4 (1996)
Quasi un canto (2002)
Quasi un concertino (2003)
Quasi una visione (2004)
Quasi una fuga (2005)
Violin Concerto (2011)
Variations on Myself (2012), chamber orch
Cello Concerto (2014)
Quasi una storia (2015)
Quasi un concerto per clarinetto ed archi (2017)

Chamber ensembles

Wind Quintet No. 2 (1978)
Piano Trio (1978), vn, vc, pf
Shadows of Gilgamesh (1988), fl, ob, cl, hn, tpt, trombones, perc, pf, vn, va, vc, db
Music for the Book of Kells (1990), 5perc, pf
Four Concertini of Ice (1993), fl, ob, cl, hn, vn, vc, db, perc
Trauerfelder (1995), 4perc
Wind Quintet No. 3 (1999)
Sweeney’s Smithereens (2000), fl, pic, cl+bcl, perc, pf, vn, db
Quasi un amore (2002), fl, gui
Quasi una Sarabande (2008), cl, bn, hn, 2vn, va, vc, db
Clarinet Quintet (2011)
Rhapsodic Bowing (2012), 8vc
Nine Looks at Pierrot (2013), fl+picc, cl+bcl, vn, vc, pf
Quasi una Storia (2014), 8vn, 2va, 2vc, db
8 Irish Duets for Cello and Piano (2015)
Piano Trio (2016), va, vc, pf
String Quartet (2016)

Solo instrumental

Sonata for Organ (1973)
The Quare Hawk (1974), flute
Hernia (1977), double bass
Changes (1979), piano
Variations on ‘Caleno costure me’ (1982), harpsichord
Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet (1987)
Three Pieces for Guitar (1990)
Ice-Etchings No. 2 (1996), cello
Sweeney’s Total Rondo (2002), piano
Variations on ‘A Mháirín de Barra’ (2004), viola
Nine Pratoleva Pearls (2008), piano
A Dark Song (2011), bass clarinet
In the Deep Heart’s Core (2011), harp
Snapshot (2012), cello
Seven Miniatures for Solo Violin (2013)

Vocal and choral

Nine Medieval Irish Epigrams (1973), satb
Ceol an Aifrinn (1980)
Gilgamesh (1990), 7 soli, satb, orchestra
Nine Aspects of a Poem (1989; rev. 2003), satb, vn
Carraig aonair (1976), soprano, alto, pf
Kiesel (1980), soprano, 2vn, va
Cúig amhráin de chuid Gabriel Rosenstock (1980), soprano, vn, vc, pf
Dán Aimhirgín (1989), soprano, va, bcl, pf
Buile Suibhne (1998), fl+pic+afl, ob, cl+bcl, hn, perc, vn, va, vc, db, spkr
Quasi una melodia (2001), soprano, tsax, va, mar, pf
Quasi un pizzicato (2004), fl, hp, pf, perc, spkr
The Light Gleams (2006), soprano, bcl, vn, vc
Four Orchestral Prayers (2006), mezzo, orch
Five Lieder (2010), tenor, pf
Songs of Terror and Love (2011), bass, fl+picc+afl, cl+bcl, pf, vn+va, vc
Eight Haikus (2012), satb
My Alto Rhapsodies (2014), alto, orch
An Irish Christmas Carol (2014), satb

Electro-acoustic

Balthazar’s Dream (1980)
Farewell Symphonies (1982), with speaker & orch
Sweeney’s Vision (1997)
Quasi una missa (1999)
Tradurre – Tradire (2005)

Recordings

Piano Trio; The Quare Hawk; String Quartet No. 1; Gestures of Sound and Silence, Mythologies, performed by Hesketh Trio, Madeleine Berkeley (fl), Testore Quartet, Aisling Drury-Byrne (vc), Frank Corcoran (pf), Roger Doyle (perc), on: Self Help 101 (LP, 1980).
Mikrokosmoi, performed by Irish Chamber Orchestra, Fionnuala Hunt (cond.), on: Black Box Music BBM 1013 (CD, 1998).
Symphonies No. 2, 3, and 4, performed by National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Colman Pearce (cond.), on: Marco Polo 8.225107 (CD, 1999).
Mad Sweeney; Music for the Book of Kells; Wind Quintet; Sweeney’s Vision, performed by Das Neue Werk NDR Ensemble, Percussion Modern, Stuttgart Wind Quintet, on: Black Box Music BBM 1026 (CD, 1999).
Trauerfelder, performed by Modern Percussion, Joachim Winkler (cond.), on: Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg [no label code] (CD, 2000).
Quasi una missa; Piano Trio; Balthasar’s Dream; Five Rosenstock Lieder; Wind Quintet No. 3; Sweeney’s Farewell, performed by Hesketh Trio, Sabine Sommerfeld (soprano), Hamburg Trio, Daedalus Quintet, on: col legno WWE 1CD 20214 (CD, 2003).
Sweeney’s Smithereens; Five Trauerfelder; Tradurre – Tradire; Concert for String Orchestra; Five Songs Without Words, performed by Ensemble für Neue Musik München & Dieter Cichewicz (cond.), Percussion-Ensemble München & Dieter Cichewicz (cond.), Die Maulwerker & electronics, Irish Chamber Orchestra & David Robertson (cond.), Das Neue Werk NDR Ensemble & Dieter Cichewicz (cond.), on: Composers Art Label cal-13017 (CD, 2003).
Quasi una visione; Ice-Etchings No. 2; Quasi un concerto; Quasi Variations on ‘A Mhárín de Bharra’; Quasi un pizzicato; Quasi Aspects of an Irish Poem, performed by Ensemble Modern & Sian Edwards (cond.), David Stromberg (vc), Cantus Kammerorchester & Beroslaw Sipus (cond.), Wireworks Ensemble & René Gulikers (cond.), National Chamber Choir & Celso Antunes (cond.), Constantin Zanidache (va), on: Composers Art Label cal-13021 (CD, 2006).
Cello Concerto; Rhapsodietta Joyceana; Rhapsodic Bowing; Duetti Irlandesi, performed by Martin Johnson (vc), Fergal Caulfield (pf), RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, Gavin Maloney (cond.), on: RTÉ lyric fm CD 154 (CD, 2017).

References

^ Hazel Farrell: “Corcoran, Frank”, in: The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, ed. by Harry White & Barra Boydell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), p. 243–5.
^ See http://www.cmc.ie/composers/composer.cfm?composerID=25.
^ See http://www.frankcorcoran.com.
^ See http://aosdana.artscouncil.ie/Members/Music/Corcoran.aspx.
^ Farrell (2013), p. 244; see Bibliography.
^ Klein (1996), p. 289–292; see Bibliography.

Bibliography

Annette Kreutziger-Herr: “Frank Corcoran”, in: Komponisten der Gegenwart (KdG) (Munich: edition text+kritik, 1992ff.), 5th supplement, July 1994.
Axel Klein: Die Musik Irlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1996).
John Page: “A Post-War ‘Irish’ Symphony: Frank Corcoran’s Symphony No. 2”, in: Gareth Cox & Axel Klein (eds.): Irish Music in the Twentieth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003), p. 134–149.
Hazel Farrell: “Corcoran, Frank”, in: The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland, ed. by Harry White & Barra Boydell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2013), p. 243–5.
Benjamin Dwyer: “An Interview with Frank Corcoran”, in: B. Dwyer: Different Voices. Irish Music and Music in Ireland (Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2014), p. 94–111.
Hans-Dieter Grünefeld (ed.): Old and New – Sean agus Núa. An Irish Composer Invents Himself. Frank Corcoran. Festschrift at Seventy (Lübeck: the editor, 2015); ISBN 978-3-00-050153-1.

My

PIANO TRIO .

It was thirty years ago, my break-through year. I wrote that opening page for piano solo with bleeding fingers; it had to re-invent rhythm, to fight against 0ur Western tyranny of the period.
I succeeded. Then comes the cello with its own tempo , gestures and persona.
The violin is a different actor again. I had invented – for me – macrocounterpoint, no longer note against note, but layer or musical flow against layer or flow.
( I don´t necessarily ” like” the sound of the classical piano trio, the two strings having to compromise with the tempered tuning of their a powerful piano – only with this hard-won freedom of MY layered approach could I , I felt, accept the sonorities of this deeply compromised mini-orchestra ). Out of the boiling miasma erupted bits of that Brahms theme.
Yet, before it takes over too powerfully, it´s gone again- quasi una visione .
This early work of mine I love for its poised layers and polytemporal richness of sonorities and gestures and lines.

QUASI UNA MISSA , / after ” Balthazar´s Dream ( Berlin 1980 ) and the Bourgs Festival Premier Prix-winning ” Sweeney´s Vision” ( West German Radio commission of 1997 ) ,
was my third electro-acoustic composition ( Commissioned by West German Radio 1999.
It won the 2002 Swedish E.M.S. Prize ) . Like all my ” quasi- ” works of the late nineties and since, it is a composition of this composer who is musically no longer innocent; I know – sadly – too much world-music, too much music of our Western polyphonic tradition.

I wanted to use – for my four movements – ( – but they´re only ” Quasi”

KYRIE, GLORIA – CREDO , SANCTUS, AGNUS DEI ! ) as my building-blocks two thousand years of Irish God-utterances from our Irish island , bits of texts from the Celtic god, Aimhirgi­n, up through Eriugena and Mac Giolla Bri­de and Berkeley to Beckett and Joyce and God-only-knows what else, an Irish stew of Irish theology, a musical archaeology of 2000 yeras of religious tradition.
My ” KYRIE” ( – abbreviated commas, please ! ) is my homage to Palestrina and to our Western chanted counterpoint, as my sacred syllables fugue towards that magical ” Amen!”
St. Patrick beats with bony wrist St. Patrick
´s Bell.
Quasi- GLORIA has the Wake´s Thunder-word and Glendalough bird-song ( – yes, authentic recordings ! Here , fetishism is all ! )
and a total theophantic eruption, Bronze Age Irish horns from the National Museum, halo and awe.

My Quasi- SANCTUS cooks a heady mix of God-statements plus 7th. c. St. Columbanus´s Latin ” Heia! ” – Chorus ,
his monks rowing backwards up the mighty Rhine from Cologne
( / beside whose great Gothic cathedral I mixed my music ) .

Quasi- AGNUS DEI sums up : Irish sorrow, joy, nunc stans, lullaby and dance and Aran Island keening old women , port- a-bheil ,
in short my Irish Circus

Quasi.

I wrote this Musing below all of ten years ago. In Lazio. What did it mean at all ?

Well, I was ten years younger. I had not yet composed the Cello Concerto, the Violin Concerto, Four Orchestral Prayers, Quasi Una Fuga and several other Corcoran works.
Nor had I yet learned serenit’a, calmness, accept it all. Nor written my recent Sc’eal Beag. Nor discovered wild garlic, thyme, basil or origano.
Nor written certain focal Haikus.
Nor even thought of publishing the Festschrift Frank Corcoran ( or indeed its sub-title : “An Irish Composer Invents Himself.” )
Nor presented my Seven Theses On James Joyce And Music in the Dublin James Joyce Centre.

So whose used-up yarn is this spinning ? How is this writing voyeur ? My own e – entrails?
2006 was no bad year.
The voyeur is always in me?
Which
looking–glass declares an interest?
Evening–questions seldom going away, let my fine fingers sing it:
Take Euclidian parallels.
Take: ‘‘Can music ever be completely
programme–free?’’
Now if your answer is ‘‘Yes’’, why can’t we make a case also for the
occasional, programme–free Musing? This here is one such: perhaps in the
whole flaming firmament, this e–mail might be only the second known case of
an Uncaused Cause (lower case, please).
E–scutter floweth as it will,
meandering magma loitering, causing at least a civilized smile.
It’s not actually enough to fob off Our Great E–typing Author with
‘‘uncaused causation’’ or with
‘‘let–it–flow–if–or–where–it–magmatically will’’
either. Bad enough to be caught anywhere near this theory of
‘‘any possible programme’’ (– eg. Our Muser–Author’s ounds, the scrofulous breakfast, gene
versus Jane versus Holy Joe in early boyhood).

If idle is as idle strives to be, if (as here) it be
meta–musing on and on how to see behind its own very behind, then, there, be the
art of comedy chided.
This e–centred, this I–centred e–thrust, swallowed up in victory, all very
well that ;
– by the way, who’ll fork out the cheque–book when the
celestial nuptials for ‘‘I’’ and for ‘‘Me’’ draw nigh, this very night and all, oh my ‘‘Musing’’, my very sawl?

What be e–writing at all, mused or fused tohuwabohu?
Then suffices no ‘‘It’s only snorting self–expression’’.
As is the humble courtier’s microtonally tuned fart.
And the humbler’s
(eaten well prior) white–beans for lunch after the early morning’s quartering
up at Hangman’s Square, a mere finch in the turnip–pie, causing this (then
this in its turn, then, further causes) uncaused exhuding, this very
what?

I wasn’t it. He there. Master Magma himself, careful, boy.
Not every musing could keep up concealing the awkward given of the
e–mail reflexive, the e–mail at play,
the e–mail confessional, Gödel’s E–mail,
the e–cry or the e–caoine, e–haiku and e–mourn.
They’re on the prowl, our
dear anti – ‘‘Musing’’ police. Have to be. You couldn’t allow total e–licence to the e–plebs.
O Inner circle, sneak closer. Either a ‘‘Musing ’’ amuses or, in its musing, it bemuses. Either it’s an Uncaused Cause (– but ‘‘LOWER CASE, PLEASE’’)
or is eén now causing wryness, a dry throat, reach for red pencil, sure the
man’s mad as a muser?
Exhausted WHO is emailing exhaustive whom the following
text: ‘‘This e–message is in love with itself’’?

What makes our homo e–scribens so different, we left the wall–paintings and
Sumerian crúisgín l´n behind a long time ago?
Out with it, your cheap
attacks on e–courage! Beat intransivity, slash the e–knot of reflexiveness!

Quod scripsi non really scripsi, true or Gödel–true? Could it be that,
e–quill and e–ink put tranquilly aside, we never, never, never love
unselfishly?
Who said you can’t be e–mailing ‘‘In Paradisum’’?
Is Paradise my mode of
existence while I mutate into my own e–mail?
All changed, changed utterly, I
now am subsumed in what I have written.
I have become this e–text.
Scared?
Naw… My actual existence is also virtuality.

What is behind my behind,
then? How’ll I have a look?

The Funeral music of Lutoslawski was in 2005 –

8th March 2005: RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra

David Brophy conductor

Corcoran Quasi un Lamento

Lutos?awski Musique funèbre

Corcoran Quasi un Canto

Dear Editor,

I used to think it was the Genom Celticum, this continuing inability to tolerate art music in the arts-corner. One tactic is to refer to it as squeaky-gate music.
Music as extended time-art. Time out. Time bent, buckled and trimmed to attack the subcutaneous heart.

I used to see Ó Riada´s (rightly lauded – his problem lay elsewhere…)
bringing ceol traidisiúnta back into the Pale in so conquering a fashion, so confidently,
as the main obstacle to our Irish continued automatic exclusion (Oh yes!)
of our music from the canon of the thinkable arts.

This unability to allow this sound-art to exist, to BE – (even as mere) possibility in my human consciousness- extended , always COMPLEX (but simultaneously SIMPLE) challenge to my ears´ retention: Sounding Form.

You can’t bate Time.

I was very wrong. Take the New Germany, where I work in these difficult vine-yards these long twenty years or more.

Forget Beethoven. Forget Goethe and Schiller. Hamburg´s most popular theatre-piece at the moment,
titled Bite Me, Take Me, Fuck Me, Suck Me, says it better.
The locals cannot imagine music as a (yes, demanding – what´s wrong with courage?) shaping of temporal form that
jogs your ears after the first eight bars have subsided.

Art-music is no longer secure here. The Faith has been lost.
Was it ever really here? My belief – that you must fashion sound-in-time or time-in-et-cetera as a poet, sculptor, dramatist, painter, neon-artist – is now an endangered species of Faith.
We Irish meet us Germans in a curious, innate inability to hang in there after those first seven, glorious,

assymetrical bars of beaten, bashed, sung, stroked, licked or bitten sensuous material.

Readers of JMI, why this alignment of Irish aphasia with teutonic musical dyslexia ?

Frank Corcoran
Hamburg

Published on 1 March 2002

Since 1983 Frank Corcoran has been Professor of Composition and Theory in the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Hamburg. His CDs include Mad Sweeney (BBM 1026) and Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, & 4 (Marco Polo 8.225107).Frank Corcoran is guest composer and artistic director at the Sligo Contemporary Music Festival, full details of which appear on the back cover of The JMI. Since 1983 Frank Corcoran has been professor of composition and theory in the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik und darstellende Kunst, Hamburg. His CDs include Mad Sweeney (BBM 1026) and Symphonies Nos. 2,3 & 4 (Marco Polo 8.225107)

NORDDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK
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Sonnabend,
SENDEWOCHE 49
3. Dezember
Nachtrag zu Woche 48

Prisma Musik

Thema: Kleine Schule des musikalischen Hörens: Frank Corcoran hört das Streichquintett C-Dur von Franz Schubert
Das Werk gehört zu seinen letzten und gilt Kennern als Gipfel dessen, was in dieser Kunst überhaupt möglich ist. Generationen haben sich den Kopf darüber zerbrochen, wie Schubert zum Beispiel die magische Stimmung des Adagio-Satzes erzeugt hat.

Der irische Komponist Frank Corcoran versucht in der Kleinen Schule des musikalischen Hörens den Geheimnissen dieser Musik auf die Spur zu kommen, die einem unbegreiflichen Schaffensrausch auf dem Kranken- und schließlich Sterbebett entsprang.

Danach Frank Corcorans 4. Sinfonie aus dem Jahre 1996 ( National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Cond, Colman Pearce )

Yes, art can be defined.

– but 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 may define composing as:
it is sicut fumus, like smoke, ethereal. It is a temporal art, indeed THE time-art par excellence. Time-bending, stretching, sculpting, stitching, overlapping, deluding, defying, conquering. ( See Rosenstock´s ” Buailim bob ar bhás! ” )

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 Montague´s ” Sea of history / Upon which we all turn / Turn and thrash / And disappear… ”

Music keens, protests, praises a fightin´ transcendence which potentially lives 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.

FRANK CORCORAN

I felt the enormous strain on the earth’s skin
Tighter and tighter the taut vulcano’s drum…
I knew the mountain’s surface was getting thin.
When would its explosion begin to whimper, to sing ?

How long before the magma, the whole shebang
Might collapse as then, in terrible years of yore ?
From across the bay I’d also feel the whang
And wham and slam and shout and awful roar…

No, mankind can not take very much real.
Imagination falters before these Gates of Hell
But pressure mounts; our instruments are working well.

How facile our words ; our film unwinds, each reel
Shows blue-white fire, caverns , the molten smell,
Last cries of burning pain, our rush pell-mell.

Dear IRISH PAGES, Hamburg …. enclosed please fin SIX HAIKUS . Sincerely, Frank Corcoran

SIX HAIKUS 1. Five dogs – or seven –
Snarl in the cold morning air:
Barking: ” Kill the Spring!”

2. First light; wintry hope. 3. Who goes there? Summer!
Frozen iron, hoe and spade. My pen scrawls on white paper.
Another day dawns. Soft horns! Clarinets.

4. Bits of sticky sleep 5. Suppose God is light?
My eye tries to see itself A mountain´s shadow purple?
Evening birds chitter “Ciúnas, a h-anaim!”

6. Sunset, ” tramonto”,
Tiptoes through this, our window.
Well, is this then death?

FRANK CORCORAN : Irish composer, living in Hamburg and Italy. Member of Aosdana. Studied in Dublin,
Maynooth, Berlin, Rome. 1980 – 1981 Berlin Ártists Fellowship. 1989 – 90 Fulbright Professor in the U.S.A. .
Many composer-prizes, distinctions and commissions, including 2012 Cork International Choral Festival Seán ´O Riada Prize . Works performed and broadcast in Europe, N. American, Australia. See www.frankcorcoran.com also for discography and work-list. Among newest works : 2013 CELLO CONCERTO. 2012 VIOLIN CONCERTO ( NSO / Alan Smale/ Christopher Warren-Green ). EIGHT HAIKUS ( National Chamber Choir / Paul Hillier ) . 2011 SONGS OF TERROR AND LOVE ( New York ), 2010 9 ASPECTS OF AN IRISH POEM ( North German Radio Choir ), 2009 QUASI UNA FUGA ( Irish Chamber Orchestra ), 2008 QUASI UN CANTO ( Zagreb Philharmonic ) . etc. etc.