Frank Corcoran

My eighties and nineties.
Danger lurked. I knew I didn´t know enough European art-history. How invent the ( musical ) wheel ? The sonata as a bicycle? Innocence can breed disaster, lonely, lovely. Hubble´s universe, in a garden-hut near Stuttgart I composed SONATA FOR STRING ORCHESTRA ; I ” wrote ” its stringiness. I had to. I learned to invent sound forms. I had to. My American
MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS ( calls for vast percussion ).It is an Early Irish Iron Age window. I had to do it. – Nobody showed me how.
I had cut pre-digital BALTHAZAR´S DREAM with bleeding fingers at the Berlin Technical University in heady 1980. Then, years later, I composed QUASI UN LAMENTO for an odd orchestra of three saxophones, wind, percussion, piano and strings; – I often asked myself had this been my prescient scream before the violent death of Rory in Hamburg 1987 ?
Beware all Holy Fools. I’d also beware musical composition as the biography´s breakfast, the unmediated and the raw. Cook, ye composers! And yet Horace´s polished art is surely right: I must construct highest sheen, my musical art, holier than bronze , my transmuted amputations and child-cauterization and orphaned child-emotions and-ghosts and – dreams and – terrors. Too simple? Certainly. And yet….

2012 HAIKUS

1.

Around Greenland booms
A white spume of cold breakers,
White noise, cool music.

2.

For the womb the seed
Sighs.For light the eternal
Dark polar day.

3.
Once here were strong pines.
Came the Great Wind that morning.
Now they are no more.

4.
This bright New Year´s Day
I replay our autumn film,
Its lovely evening….

5.
Old tides rush in where
No hovering white angel
Dares open its mouth

No words can. My writing ( I must ) music . In this 2016. – I’ll forget for a moment the global slop. Its money. It

is money.

Its hidden slaughter of all arts, artists, artistic works. It flattens. For money. Milk the cow while your cancer is ….

EPPUR SI MUOVE ( Galileo – no saint ) :

It is the highest ( protest PLUS music-composing together, Herr Adorno ) activity ?

How wrest / writhe ? To shape that initial ” Urmaterial ” ( Thank God for the Germans’ aesthetic / genes )

It was the fatal year 1976 . Just forty years. ( I remember the dog’s vomit yellow, certainly, of my Monkstown, Dublin, carpet ) Ahead lay years of terror.

My fingers bled . That page one ( solo piano ) , my PIANO TRIO gestated, me young. That work became for me technically AND HYPOTHUMOTICALLY

my breakthrough.

Just forty years on. This morning before ( cold-red ) Hamburg dawn , I completed this SECOND PIANO TRIO ( this time with a viola. Not violin. – bound to be quite different.) . Four not long movements . All Barred. Yerra, I suppose, “Charakterstuecke ” . – Not that this demystifies anything written, . The wonder. Strong structures. Strong aura. Strong architecture.

Brass, decay won’t nibble on my fresh manuscript. Last ? Yes.

Frank Corcoran ; Piano Trio Nr. 2. ( 2016 Ja – January IST ” the wicked month ” )

And Fank Corcoran , that ICY West Berlin, my Sender Freies Berlin’s deutsch marks swinging free, weepy Dublin

CONCORDE premiered , yes, in Zagreb Biennale 2013 . Great music. Musicians. Yes. Irish GREAT and TOTAL intellectual

laziness – YIPPEE . “Great ? ”

BH’OIFINN . N, Tipp vomit-group – Okay !

There’s an enticing new-music culture in Ireland, and though much of its product is rarely heard in English concert venues (or Welsh or Scottish, one suspects), these releases from Black Box will play their part in fostering a closer awareness of the subject. While Frank Corcoran and John Buckley represent the middle generation, being born in 1944 and 1951 respectively, Gráinne Mulvey and Deirdre Gribbin are of younger stock, of 1966 and 67 vintage, so the range is evenly balanced both in age and gender. Through the medium of chamber music each composer focuses on an aspect of poetic understanding that avoids, with Corcoran’s exception, the issue of a distinctly national idiom. Corcoran writes music for the Book of Kells, and for Heaney’s translation of the Middle Irish text Mad Sweeney. His ‘macro counterpoint’ and bright and stormy sounds evoking the truth of the Irish dream landscape….

Born and raised in Southern Wisconsin, Lori graduated from Beloit College in 1986, with a double major in vocal performance and conducting, and countless hours spent on-air in the campus radio station.

Her college hobby became a more permanent part of her life at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, due to a wrong turn in seeking a professor’s office. Stumbling into the studios of WUWM-FM, and a notice of a vacant position covering a late night jazz program, she did what any underfunded graduate student would do and applied for the job. Lori would go on to host various jazz and classical programs, when she was not singing with the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus and Chamber Singers, or conducting ensembles of her own.

Lori moved her on-air home to “Milwaukee’s Classical Choice”, WFMR-FM, in 1988, first as overnight programmer, then as afternoon announcer/production manager. In addition to studio and live broadcasts, she was producer of “Legacy”, composer Frank Corcoran’s lecture series on the development of classical music in the twentieth century, and a weekly program of interviews and music for the Milwaukee Ballet. Where she had

Celebrating Frank Corcoran at 70
Forthcoming concert includes world premieres performed by Alan Smale and Martin Johnson.

A concert celebrating the work of composer Frank Corcoran will take place at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin on Thursday 26 November at 8pm.

Beginning with an introduction by writer Barra Ó Séaghdha, composer Benjamin Dwyer will then deliver a keynote talk on the composer’s work and its connection to Joyce.

The second part of the evening will begin with a short public interview with the composer, followed by the world premiere of his Rhapsodietta Joyceana performed by cellist Martin Johnson.

This will be followed by performances of Variations on A Mháirín de Barra (1995) performed by Adèle Johnson (viola), Seven Theses on Joyce and Music presented by the composer, and Joycespeak Musik (1995) for tape. The concert concludes with the world premiere of Seven Miniatures for violin performed by Alan Smale.

Born in 1944 in Borrisokane, County Tipperary, Frank Corcoran studied philosophy, music, ancient languages and theology in Ireland and Rome and took further studies in composition with composer Boris Blacher in Berlin.

His output includes orchestral, choral, chamber and electro-acoustic music. Corcoran’s Joycespeak Musik won the Studio Akustische Kunst in 1995, Sweeney’s Vision won the Bourges Festival Premier Prix in 1999, and Quasi Una Missa won the 2002 Swedish E.M.S. Prize.

Two Unholy Haikus took first prize at the Cork International Choral Festival in 2012 and his Eight Haikus was awarded first prize at the International Foundation for Choral Music in 2013.

Corcoran’s music has been performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra among many others, and has been recorded on the Marco Polo, Wergo, Composers Art and Black Box labels.

Recent large-scale works include a Cello Concerto, written for Martin Johnson, and a Violin Concerto, composed for Alan Smale, both premiered with the RTÉ NSO. Corcoran is a member of Aosdána and lives in Hamburg and Italy.

A book dedicated to the composer’s work was recently published. Frank Corcoran – Festschrift at Seventy – Old and New – Sean agus Nua: An Irish Composer Invents Myself is edited by Hans-Dieter Grünefeld and includes contributions from Benjamin Dwyer, Roger Doyle and Jane O’Leary.

The book is available from the Contemporary Music Centre here.

For more on the concert on 26 November, visit http://on.fb.me/1LbtvTs

Dutch Radio – Concertzender

17. January . 17.00

Composer-portrait FRANK CORCORAN

A number of new works by Frank Corcoran will be performed in September and October 2013

The Still-Life with Guitar trio will premiere Corcoran’s work for flute, viola and guitar Seven Cubist Miniatures for Cardiff at the National Museum of Cardiff on 15 September. The ensemble, featuring Emma Coulthard on flute, Philip Heyman on viola and Michael McCartney on guitar, is dedicated to performing new or rarely heard music featuring the guitar and performs.

In October, the award-winning University of the Philippines Madrigal Singers will premiere Corcoran’s work 8 Haikus. The piece, written to texts by the composer himself, was selected as the winner out of 637 entries of the International Federation for Choral Music’s Second International Competition for Choral Composition. The performance will take place in Manila on 5 and 6 October.
Share this:

FacebookTwitter

Related

Upcoming performances of music by Frank CorcoranIn “Composer News”

New Music Digest 9 – 16 SeptemberIn “New Music Digest”

Frank Corcoran geb. 1944 in Tipperary Irland. Studierte in Dublin (alte Sprachen, Philosophie), Rom (Theologie , Gregorianik und Renaissance-Musik) und Berlin (Meisterschüler von Boris Blacher). 1971-79 Music Inspector beim Irischen Erziehungsministerium. 1980 Stipendiat des Berliner Künstlerprogramms . 1981 Gastprofessor an der HdK Berlin. 1982 Professor in Stuttgart, seit 1983 an der Hamburger Musikhochschule. 1989-90 Fulbright-Professor in den USA und Gastdozent in CalArts, Harvard, Wisconsin, Boston, New York und Indiana. Seit 1983 ist Frank Corcoran Mitglied der Irischen AdK.

Im Elektronischen Studio der T U BERLIN produzierte:

Balthasars Traum 1980
Sweeney’s Vision 1997 ( 1999 Bourges Festival . Erster Preis )
Sweeney’s letztes Gedicht, Sweeney’s Farewell 1997/98
Tradurre – Tradire 2004

Im Elektronischen Studio des WDR KOELN produziert:

Quasi Una Missa 1999 ( 2002 Schwedischer EMS Preis )

In Hamburg produziert:

JoyceMusik 1995 ( Studio Akustische Kunst Preis Preis )