Frank Corcoran

irish composer

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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

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 )

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.

MAY IS STILL A-COMING

Apparently I am happy ( tell no man ) –
Why ? Sheaves wet, untimely rains, yet mighty Concerto´s four movements excellent with a new feisty felicity of flow and ebb and cello cantilenas. Soul and mind and limbs and musical imagination on full energy. It seems. The now. Immense. Lines and line and orchestral mass all there. Slapped it down with midnight ink, flies sleeping, outside a horse snuffles, little burrowers burrow. To be able to write, terrific. Sound and silence is what it boils down to, shape both. Big energy in the brass throughout, yet my orhestral accompaniment always deft, a help and not a hindrance to the Big Chalumeau Bowed Singer, rhapsodic bowing.

WATCH THIS SPACE, HICCUP

1. APPARENTLY I AM noTHING

2. apparently I will be Quickly enough no thing, no person, no remnant, no REmembrance, no symph_ onie, NO noThing, NO; no
conductor`s concert`s NO NOTHING:

SWEET MAY , SWEET MAYTIME

Cover their faces
On fasting Patrick´s Mountain
No one needs old gods…

Yes, a May Haiku prior to lift off for the Cork International Choral Festival where we´ll sing for our supper and enjoy whackfo´Killy, a beaker full of that warm Atlantic south, a draught of dark liquid, no bad thing, really. “In The Deep Heart´s Core” for Solo Harp, a recent piece by doughty Frank C. will be premiered in September, it now transpires, that tremendous low F Sharp string sounding as a kind of pedal-tone.
No mean lack of energy, an orchestral energy quasi, like the mighty 4 movements emerging for the( newest ) Cello Concerto. Whisht! ( Admit nothing ! )