Frank Corcoran

A new work . In petto and on the drawing-board ( okay, smeared by wine-glass bottoms, by smudges of ink-slashed rejected solutions, my royal white Typex, this present Spring sweat ) .
The 13 strings of my chamber orchestra spawn their lines, our chords,
my cadenced points of view and of sound. Thirty years ago I was bleating about form in music , architectural forms of sections and their relations ( Joyce – Aristotle ) to the full thing. The whole string story; ravishing colour-mixtures of my string orchestra , yes, and all my penned soli and heard doubles ( and my few deep strings – and what then do I do with my choir of high eight violins ? – Have I heard them sing their say ? Have I ? ) ( Agreed, two violas, two celli and one bass are a darling, my deep bog colours´ love and this viscidity and turf-muddiness ) .
The age-old problems of form once again in my New York New Work ( Title ? Neo-phony or – phonic ? . How begin / how´l I end ? How spin it out now, and whither and why ? A heard repeat of just what ? Teleology never sleeps in a new Corcoran work for 13 Strings. – Pity ; ´twould make things much easier ! I´ll add here other problems of a Spring – Summer composer : memory, “Quasi”, irony, unconscious quotation, stop repeating myself, courage, what´s “ew”, etc.
Must stop this ( – quick! we have but an ) instant ! Other I´d never get finished , neither backbone nor filigrane nor stuccatura nor The Big String Thing.

I almost weep this almost May evening here in “Duck-Egg-Purple ” Tramonto Lazio for “my” great poet, a ” WORDSMITH” , for great Patrick Creagh, I weep for his ” LAMENTO FOR THE BORDERGUARD”. For that great man. Walk tall !
In those -for me- mythic Patrick Creagh Seventies , I and my ” family” ( I´ll explain these inverted commas very painfully; see below ) experienced ( -here my weeping breaks / brakes me / he ) Patrick´s and Ursula´EXTRAORDINARY hospitality in their “Spanda”, their Radda-in-Chianti of the vipers. I see Tuscan Patrick´s gently ironic , his quizzical look at my young Tipperary non-hurler´s search for yet another, for a father, for my father, for any father. Patrick ( for me almost an elder Corcoran brother ) respected tones,. ( My composer´s seventies had started slowly; heavily clotted; these delightful nine early choral MEDIEVAL IRISH EPIGRAMMES are certainly and still me; the great 1974 to 1975 THREE ORCHESTRAL PIECES are heroically painted )
-each Leopardi word was for Patrick ( -was he a Creagh ? Maybe ´O Cré ? a Brazier ? whence the Mac Cre ? ) a musical tone or a chord, an orchestration.

April did bring in high temperatures. Today cool, turbulent, indecisive clouds, duck egg purple on the Umbran mountains just across. This week will bring back the sun , then
steady May heat, the lake waters lapping it up. Balm of an evening, a purple glow, yes. Post-Zagreb Music Festival, great renewed energy; A New Work for 13 strings. Brood. Bring to a slow boil.

Tom Service of the “Guardian” ´s New Music is no mean daw;
His Guardian contributions on New Music are close to heroic.
Why ? In a desert of the media he risks. He comments and sketches and , lastly, leads us to the newest Lindberg, say, or why we should skirt obliquely a Saariaho, a Salonen ( – yes, my heart and bush are voting these some years for Finns. Oh woe is me , an Irish orchestral composer …. More, no doubt , of this – well- later …. ). Meanwhile I bask in Guardian Tom Service´s flick of the music-journalist´s pen : ” Bantok ” but –

nobody´s fault actually – but NEVER Bartók .

The pieces you’ll hear at the Proms – from the Sapphic Poem, a langorously meandering blend of cello concerto and tone poem that Raphael Wallfisch plays on 24 July to the Sea Reivers on the Last Night, a discarded scherzo from the Hebridean Symphony – give a generous summary of the luxurious but easily digestible range and reach of Bantock’s orchestral imagination: think colourful Wagnerian harmony with a dash of Celtic modality and a soupçon of Rimsky-inflected flair and you’ll be on the right track. Best of all the Proms pieces, I think, is The Witch of Atlas, a tone-poem that Vladimir Jurowski will conduct with the London Philharmonic on 30 August, which Bantock wrote in 1902. That’s the earliest of the works we’ll hear at the Proms; the latest is one of Bantock’s most famous orchestral pieces, his Celtic Symphony for string orchestra and the mythic-bardic strains of no fewer than six harps. What would already have sounded like an elegy for a lost idyll in Bantock’s youth must have seemed almost unbearably nostalgic by the time the Celtic was composed and first performed in the early 1940s.

Bantock’s long life (born in 1868, he died in 1946) put him at the centre of British musical life, teaching at the University of Birmingham for 26 years, and helping to found the orchestra that would become the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (one of the first pieces they performed in 1920 was Bantock’s overture Saul). Yet his music never strayed far from the territory of wistful romanticism that he had found by the turn of the century. The suite of performances at the Proms gives us the chance to hear how much more there is to Bantock than dreams of Celtic duskiness and warmed-up Wagnerism.

Them mid-seventies for me weren´t, ahem, the easiest years of my sweet youth ( – but which , were, then, eh ? ) . Yes,I´d done good, I had dug a solid composer´s work with the choral MEDIEVAL IRISH EPIGRAMMES, with the HERR JESU CHRIST Choral Cantata ( German-Baroque texts by Paul Fleming ); both went later to the Paris International Composers´Rostrum. The THREE ORCHRESTRAL PICTURES ( ” Pictures From MY Exhibition” ) were strongly conceived, strongly orchestrated. High-born. Yet I struggled – eg. how to solve – for me- a convincing rhythmic line ? Two floating instrumental lines ? All three grand soloists´ fazy-hazy lines , as eg. in that early Irish and Dublin PIANO TRIO which the 2013 Zagreb Biennale honoured. Oh! those searing, magical young Zagreb string players , their Croatian electricity ( it was searing / amputating, too, the Croatian State´s war – brothers´, all cousins´, their very spouses´, is a mere twenty years finished… ).
My opening page for low piano solo is the most difficult that I´ve ever had to imagine. It must break balls, it breaks fingers, play rhythmic symmetries at all costs. The cello´s entry is grandiose. Ditto its floating ( Bergian ? ) solo violin line, their lines, transposing and transporting, defying gravity ( yet not ” gravitas” ) . My Piano Trio´s composer´s argument is only beginning; a musical ” argument “, strife, a struggle, who´ll win ( with that Brahms reminiscence ? ), I wonder ? Tones will. A last tone. A young man´s extraordinary break-through.
This 2013 Zagreb Biennale ZAGREB PIANO TRIO Concert broke new ground electric.

World-class these Croatian string-players at the Muzicki Biennale Zagreb. The Zagreb Piano Trio and the Zagreb String Quartet, melting tones and incandescent chording, high electric energy, ecstatic bowing. ( – rhapsodic is certainly here no over-used word… ) Musical delight of a very high art. More later when the jet-turbines of Croatian Airlines have subsided.

17:00 – Tuesday
HGZ
Inside EU

Zagreb Trio

Vidmantas Bartulis (LT): Express No. 3, or Glinka and Nemirovich-Danchenko on a Train Trip from St.Petersburg to Moscow
Frank Corcoran (IE): Piano Trio
Wolfgang Rihm (DE): Fremde Szene III / Strange Scene III, for piano trio
Peteris Vasks (LV): Episodi e canto perpetuo/ Episodes and Perpetual Chant

Irish Composer Awarded Top International Choral Prize by International Federation for Choral Music (IFCM)
Imagine the gargantuan task facing five leading international composers on the jury, working their way through 637 choral compositions from every corner of the globe, to select a First Prize in the International Federation for Choral Music’s Second International Competition for Choral Composition?

After the jury’s lengthy deliberation, Irish-born composer (now living in Germany) Francis Corcoran was selected and awarded First Prize for his stunning choral work Eight Haikus. For his award winning work, Francis has been awarded 5000Euros and a Diploma from the IFCM. The large number of submissions displayed the vast growth in the competition and interest in new choral music from the composition community. The judges were Olli Kortekangas (Finland), Graham Lack (Uk/ Germany), Libby Larsen (USA), John Pamintunian (The Philippines) and Paul Stanhope (Australia).

Fulbright scholar, Frank Corcoran was born in 1944 in Tipperary, and studied at Dublin, Maynooth, Rome and Berlin. His considerable musical output includes chamber, symphonic, choral and electro-acoustic music, through which he particularly explores Irish issues such as language and history. Frank Corcoran has worked with several recognized poets and received numerous national and international awards for his compositions. He is a founding member of Aosdána and currently lives in Hamburg.

25 November 2011 (Friday)
4:00 pm
venue: Royal Irish Academy of Music , Dublin 2, Ireland
composer: Frank Corcoran
work: Clarinet Quintet (premiere . RTE Commission ) and ( 2011 ) A DARK SONG ( Bass Clarinet Solo )
performer(s): Fintan Sutton ( cl and bass cl ), RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet.
note: The composer will be present and will talk about his newest work.

1987 NEW MUSIC PROJECT WEEKEND, Nov. 6 and 7 and 8. Frank Corcoran talks about and plays
“Balthazar´s Dream ” which was “made” at the Technical University Berlin Electronic Studios. Premiere Seoul Festival 1981.