Frank Corcoran

irish composer

EIGHT SHORT YEARS GONE NOW – WHITHER ?

Frank Corcoran with acerbic wit and his persistent artistic excitement gave a talk, and an introduction to the Electronic Music performances that were hopefully recorded and can be relished in the future. Corcoran’s Quasi una Visione cast its vision over Irish history effectively and is a classic performance that enables references, almost pictures, of the fertile struggle that eclipsed this small nation for so many centuries and notates for us the logo of Sweeney or “the mad Irish”. Unusual individuals were forced during our history to react in the face of violent suppression that could not be overturned, a history of colonialism that was eventually terminated in the South of the island, but there again,in the early 1900’s, by extraordinary individuals. His material seems to describe this long history receding into memory, despite it’s stubborn pace, and the gradual understanding that the Irish realise. Though Ireland may now be celebrated by parade and percussion, it is nevertheless the individual, sometimes in solitude, unrecognised, who is still pushing open the doors of knowledge and creative life – to quote Corcoran himself: “At the end high piano and harp and glassy wind-chimes and tambourine say it all.”

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