Frank Corcoran

I didn´t want to come to Germany. Webern called. Me. It was lonely, lonely 1967 as I made my pilgrimage to Anton ( von ? ) Webern´s house in Austrian Mittersill – before the Stockhausens and all these Fernyhoughs etc. etc. There he got the curfew bullet, cigar ignited. ( No help. Nowhere. Austrian / [...]

You don´t know whence ? Whither? Nor I. Nor why? Sob not my song, Hiawatha, but sigh for slight hope, a sliver of light from behind the glass mirror, hearing ear-hairlets and timpanum agog, straining for Good News. A sliver ! Doubt or sift through many different objective correlatives , but I seem to return [...]

Definitely a collector´s item by now : Frank Corcoran COLLECTION ONE L.P. A 33 1/3 R.P.M. SELF HELP 101 STEREO from those now ( infinitely ) distant seventies. “Frank Corcoran is a real musician. He thinks and talks and acts out music, his own and others`, old and new, he conveys his enthusiasm to his [...]

The S-Bahn´s crónán in the wet January air as sleep knits up all unravelled pieces of fibre. This day will face the problems of yesterday, I suppose; so what´s so different in the tones of Friday? Between now and my next midnight, which images? Sounds and zounds?

Will my 2012 bring more thinking power to this Humble Hamburg Musing ? And to thinking about tones ? Thinking about thinking ? Hmmm. I wonder. Wait and hear. eg. listen to this sackbuts´music: “Cogitatum ergo cogitationes” ( = ” Because there are thoughts, therefore there have to be thinkers” . ) . Now how [...]

I´d say, oh worse. – Much worse our Irish composers´plight now. Webern and Schoenberg and Berg had it tough in post-war artMusik-creating Vienna. Okay, shall I weep ? .. Caoin tú féin, a chumadóir bhocht ! – ” Irish art ” ? ! ? My Irish composer´s seventies were , yes, tough. Why? – Because, [...]

There are only the two melodic lines, leaping and crisscrossing, chasing each other´s snake-tails, Book of Kells trellis-work in these 4 very short chapters of my FOUR PIECES FOR TWO CLARINETS. All the extremities, depths and heights, chalumeau colour, pianissimo breath, howling, high shrieks. PIECE 1. A-Clarinet follows B-Clarinet canonically up nearly three octaves. Even [...]

Unleash irony, folks of our now calving, birthing 2012. So let´s just look at the chord for a 2012 moment – here I pre-date Pythagoras and his higly Greek ” The Birth Of Music Out Of A Wheel´s Tyre Pressure”. Be happy with that. Let all our New Year Kids rocket, and racket; – well [...]

- We don´t even have our language! Now the first dirty wave of rockets ( anti-war, yes, I´ll grant you ) has slashed this Hamburg milky sky, high above my high , Ariel high loft high stashed window. Why is this Hamburg New Year Myth so dirty? Why are their young , young longings, so [...]

Too angelic choirs tend to bore us …. Is that why so much harp music can sound so trivial ? Tired? “IN THE DEEP HEART´S CORE” emerges over, out of, over against that low F sharp. Not too much chordal stuff, short motivic. Those notes G A flat B flat C sharp D occasionally bring [...]