Frank Corcoran

irish composer

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AT THE HOUR OF THE WOLF

 

Spin orchestral, vocal or or instrumental music out of the still sleeping entrails ; for a Bolsena Concert ( October 12.  2014 ), a music publisher, a contralto with symphony orchestra , a child’s 13 th. birthday, an American string orchestra, a Christmas choir, a Schott choral collection. Spin and weave. Imagine the crafted lines sounding in great spaces. Take up the intervallic slack, the slap of the chordal wads and blubberings and instrumental mutterings and onward surging form. Strong form. Well heard hearable form. Bliss.

Then return to bed. Before aurora and alba and dawn bliss blush. A new day. No bad aspiration , respiration, perspiration or, shaky word, inspiration. Really. The mind has mountains and great mountains.

 

ISSA AND THE PIG . HAIKUS

Issa’s wintry pig   /    Laughs with glee in its cold  sleep    /    Poor doomed animal

Issa hears that pig   /    Asleep, chortling and giggling    /      Shortening the winter

The pig with Issa    /    Stumbling along in the  snow   /   Both  alive, each cold.
Giggling and snuffling     /    In uneasy piglet’s sleep   /    The sty snow-covered
Pigs can see their death   /    Coming in the cold winter   /   Prepare the basin

Sausages in snow   /    Before Christmas . Tell the sow   /    “Your time is coming!” . 

The old sow’s great jaws   /   Cracked the giggling piglet’s life   /   Outside the wind howled.

A pig laughs in sleep   /    Outside it’s cruel winter   /     Red blood on white snow

Grunt or fart or snort   /   The pig sees its death coming   /    I am a small child

A cozy pig’s sleep  /   Shaken by porcine giggling   /   Don’t slip on black ice .

IN BLACK WINTER WIND  /   The pig giggles at its death  /   By a cold steel knife.

Snug in its corner   /   Our pig giggles in its sleep   /    Its, my time will come.
Cold, driving snow on   /  The pig’s  fresh, collected blood  /   It’s him or it’s me .

gaoth an gheimhridh

an mhuc ag scigireacht
trína codladh

in winter windn <fbcorcoran@aol.com>

To: fbcorcoran <fbcorcoran@aol.com>
Sent: Thu, Sep 25, 2014 10:17 pm
Subject: Fwd: : Issa And The Pig 3,

The old sow’s great jaws   /   Cracked the giggling piglet’s life   /   Outside the wind howled.

A pig laughs in sleep   /    Outside it’s cruel winter   /     Red blood on white snow

Grunt or fart or snort   /   The pig sees its death coming   /    I am a small child

A cozy pig’s sleep  /   Shaken by porcine giggling   /   Don’t slip on black ice .

IN BLACK WINTER WIND  /   The pig giggles at its death  /   By a cold steel knife.

Snug in its corner   /   Our pig giggles in its sleep   /    Its, my time will come.

Cold, driving snow on   /  The pig’s  fresh, collected blood  /   It’s him or it’s us.

gaoth an gheimhridh   /   an mhuc ag scigireacht   /   trína codladh

in winter wind

the pig giggles
in its sleep

ccolo Cavour in Bolsena Italy will host a concert by cellist Martin Johnson and pianist Fergal Caulfield, performing a programme that includes two works by Frank Corcoran. The first, titled Im Aonar Seal, was written especially for the duo for this concert, while the second is a chamber version of a new large-scale Cello Concerto by the composer, the full version of which will be premiered by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in March 2015. Martin Johnson, who has performed Corcoran’s works in the past, will also be the soloist of the full premiere, under the baton of Kenneth Montgomery. The composer on his Cello Concerto: ‘Without the success of my Violin Concerto ( 2012 RTÉ NSO , Alan Smale Soloist, Conductor Christopher Warren Green) I couldn’t and wouldn’t have started work on the four mighty movements of the Cello Concerto. The Concerto sways bouyantly between its great forebears, Dvorak’s 1890 Cello Concerto and Lutoslawsky’s powerful work for the soloist Rostrapovitch of the early seventies. I, too, use a huge symphony orchestra . My opening movement uses a motto theme on the trumpets which appears a number of times, using the 7 notes of my Corcoran Scale ( G, A flat, C sharp, D, E flat, F sharp, and A) which has supplied the building-material for most of my recent works (incl. the Violin Concerto). My Slow Movement uses my chromatic version of Dvorak s hymn in his Slow Movement. My Scherzo is the most violent music I have ever composed. Its massed percussion and brass are bent on annihilating the solo cello. But it wins. My final fourth movement gives a tranquil resolution to everything already heard in the three previous movements, a summing up, the solo instrument’s triumph. 12 Oct, 6pm, Piccolo Teatro Cavour, Balseno, Italy

ccolo Cavour in Bolsena Italy will host a concert by cellist Martin Johnson and pianist Fergal Caulfield, performing a programme that includes two works by Frank Corcoran. The first, titled Im Aonar Seal, was written especially for the duo for this concert, while the second is a chamber version of a new large-scale Cello Concerto by the composer, the full version of which will be premiered by the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in March 2015. Martin Johnson, who has performed Corcoran’s works in the past, will also be the soloist of the full premiere, under the baton of Kenneth Montgomery. The composer on his Cello Concerto: ‘Without the success of my Violin Concerto ( 2012 RTÉ NSO , Alan Smale Soloist, Conductor Christopher Warren Green) I couldn’t and wouldn’t have started work on the four mighty movements of the Cello Concerto. The Concerto sways bouyantly  between its great forebears, Dvorak’s 1890 Cello Concerto and Lutoslawsky’s powerful work for the soloist Rostrapovitch of the early seventies. I, too, use a huge symphony orchestra . My opening movement uses a motto theme on the trumpets which appears a number of times, using the 7 notes of my Corcoran Scale ( G, A flat, C sharp, D, E flat, F sharp, and A) which has supplied the building-material for most of my recent works (incl. the Violin Concerto). My Slow Movement uses my chromatic version of Dvorak s hymn in his Slow Movement. My Scherzo is the most violent music I have ever composed. Its massed percussion and brass are bent on annihilating the solo cello. But it wins. My final fourth movement gives a tranquil resolution to everything already heard in the three previous movements, a summing up, the solo instrument’s triumph.      12 Oct, 6pm, Piccolo Teatro Cavour, Balseno, Italy

TRUMPETS BLOW !

October 12 2014                      Piccolo Teatro Cavour Bolsena     18.00

 

Martin Johnson ( violoncello ) and Fergal Caulfield ( pianoforte )    play Beethoven and Ravel and :

Frank Corcoran :  “Im Aonar Seal ”   (  2014  )  and

Frank Corcoran :   Cello Concerto     (  2013  )  reduction in preparation for   13.3.2015       Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra  Dublin Premiere with the National Symphony Orchestra , Cond. Kenneth Montgomery , Solo Martin Johnston

 

GOLDEN SEPTEMBER SLITHERS TOWARDS GOLDEN OCTOBER

Variations On An Issa Haiku  :

1.   The pig in its sleep   /   Giggles and shakes and snortles   /   Poor,   doomed animal

2.   Worst winter in years   /   Cold shakuhachi music   /    Snug the pig inside

 

3.  Wind, howl at the sty   /   In which the piglets snuggle    /    And giggle in sleep

 

4.  Issa slips on ice    /    His cold pig chortles, hungry    /    Either she or me

 

5.    The wintry cold wind’d     /    Slice the poet as his knife   /    Slits a giggling pig.

 

6.     Sleep inside, snug sow    /     Time enough for your piglets    /    To face their killing

” MOVE TO TRASH ” ? WHAT POEM ? WHAT FUN !

“William of Ockham, oh where have you been ?”

“I’ ve been out dancing on the head of a pin!”

What do you conclude, now your task is complete? ”

“It’s fine for the angels, but hard on my feet !”

Not bad as a comment on this composer’s life and time-signatures , getting the work hewed and sculpted, cut and measured and ready for the first performance, in one sense ( but only one ) its “REAL” birth. In the beginning was the sound. Then came tone and word and egg and chicken and all such.

DONT GIVE UP NOW

Just a little further. Come on ! Finishing ( and beginning ! ) the Oboe Quartet was bloody murder!  Also the summery 3 Pieces for Violin and Piano. Also my choral works ( Hayo-Verlag ). And the Eight Haikus, to be published by Schott.( – “He should be shot….  ”  Sorry! )  The Different Voices Publication is a little help ( better late than ….  ). Keep going, good little donkey ! Compose, conceive, decompose. What ever is next ? ( I had mentioned the Piccolo Teatro Cavour Concert in Bolsena on October 12 ?  ( My Cello Concerto in the reduction for Piano and Cello )  Also North South NYC on February 13 2015 (

Quasi Una Storia for String Orchestra ? ) . Also Concerto for Cello and Orchestra world premiere in Dublin on March 13 2015.
Move on!

ROBERT DARROLL´S ” KOREAN TRILOGY”

Robert Darroll, the animated film artist, died this May in Berlin. In the nineties I got to know him; I loved his “Korean Trilogy”,  (  Gestating “Moe´s Field” , then, portended a wholly new departure , a new filmic revolution )  their tens of thousands of little hand-painted pictures  individually filmed, composed, sequenced, kineticized, It was Darroll´s special play of images: a dot became a line, a fish, a bird, a bud, a flower, a pool, a stream, a river, an ocean . Movement as poetic, directed by the artist´s narrative and Gestalt-psychological logic. Each of his films was a poem, in the best sense a Horatian hymn to mutation.

Robert Darroll´s departure in 2001 from Hamburg to Tokyo did hurt; and his May death this year brought no closure, no peace, only the Unanswered Question. Yet I, too, plod on. To search is to find, certainly,  form, musical forms, as you solder and bend motivs, ideas, colours, lines and masses in rhythms. Pure play as pure delight. No bad thing, Robert Darroll. Back to self-delight, poet Horace. Kinetic excellence, Herr Hanslick.

It is a fish. Is it ?

WHAT´S ALL THIS ABOUT A Seventieth ?

A word before I slide even more sidewards into  oblivion : Is my new work some kind of Conversation With Myself ? Why ever not ? My ( gestating, low cooking )  ALL MY ALTO RHAPSODIES` converses ( with me, certainly ,  ) “all about ”  the Contralto´s layers, her registers, her orchestral accompaniment, her eating / swallowing / in- and digesting and uttering my texts; they are lovingly masticated, savoured ,  soothed, sung by her whole body. Forty years ago I was worrying : ” Prima la parola e poi la musica.” –  That´s now gone. Now  it´s all complete cheeks´and glottals , glossolalia and throat´s / lung`s  / diaphragm´s  pumping, forming, moulding my very lovely text-tone-text-phrase lovingly shaped by me long before ; my shards and shoots and shapes (  and, of course, my shadows. ) Oh.  Yes. Before oblivion,okay. Okay, no hysterics in this e-column…  I´ll be damned if I play over coy : ” Is this then death”  vocal clownery, rather cast-iron forms.