Frank Corcoran

Is it spell it out here, just one more time ? One more just e-endeavour ?

In our filthy , shifty, modern tide ( the scopological is king – LOOK ! WATCH ! SEE ! The eye and not the seeing, listening ear is king – how we love our dvdeeing, your filming, her looking, his medial and mediatic prying; Thomas, Tom De Peeper is king of this, my present filthy Century of the Eye: …

Thus, where is, well, my place in this 21.st c. Eyeball And Retina And Permanently Excited optic nerves ? – But it´s my EARS ! ( J.S.Bach died of this ; good Mr. Handel ditto ) .
I am ready to writhe here out in a verse my Death-Bed Composer´s Argument. Once again :

once upon a time there was this little ( presently scripting ) lad in Ould Tipperary , surrounded by his loving parents´ me-loving hundred free – moving sows and babies and me-hating boar , – this my First Symphony, actually.
Come De Day when my pre-sentence : ” As he lay dying ” , will have got its, ashy taste,
what doth it behove Dis Composer if he , – if I , have, has not realized his, my, full musical potential, compositional ” potential” , – quite simply : if I have not dared to compose not enough , no, of my ( enormously ) wide range of potential, composed courage, – well then, also , not enough of the perfectly fused ” heard” and ” written” and of the ” having dared” to widen the limits of ( poor ) Debussy´s musically
thinkable universe . Coraggio, Corcorano, Compositore . – I have but my intervals, their hythms and their colours , densities, attacks et al . I wouldn´t be wanting to be stuck in YOUR slippers on YOUR Composer´s Death-bed… Thus:
Write. Courage.

Thursday 25. October 2012 : New Ireland / New Music Salon

( Contemporary Music Dublin )

Martin Johnson, First Cellist of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, will
premiere ” SNAPSHOT ” for Solo Cello by Frank Corcoran

Huge sorrowful eyes

Misted over , as horses

Discuss damp sorrow

I honour and mourn for Patrick Creagh . He died last week in Tuscany. His eighty two years were full of words, literatures,
poets and poetry, his own and others, his translations of his beloved Leopardi and of so many. A gentleman and a scholar and a grand man, Irish and English roots in his “Brasier-Creagh” of North Cork, Oxford, Radda-in-Chianti. The ´O Cré s were fiddlers and pipers and sheriffs and racy gentry and Old Irish and New. Patrick inherited so much, passed it on, crafted the right word and the well-crpentered phrase and tittle . How honour and mourn for him ? Respect that legacy? How keep my, his respect for language ? For the pared down pen? He shall not go gentle. A tone or three , too, to sing his praise, I would think, a finely jewelled work for Flute and Viola and Guitar , their sighs and tuttis and solos, legato upon staccato, Juan Gris browns and the brighter colours, of course, also. Music has been at this for so long now in our cultural history, crooning or keening our beloved dead. Praise a good man, Patrick! MOLADH!

Does travel broaden my mind ? My musical mind? Or narrow it ? Imbibe, engorge sound-impressions for a short while before the drawbridge rises protectively once more?
Dunno. Is location a Lockian secondary accident , almost irelevant to the substantial,onion-skinned ME ? How shall , who shall adjudicate this? I mostly incline to the ( surely surly? ) opinion that to stay put concentrates the energy. That my flying around airports and traipsing around tourists and walking de feet off in foreign halls, academies, museums or galleries uses limited time, ceteribus paribus, unseriously. “I move therefore I am” is weak enough, a feeble enough proof that I exist, have value, craft anything worth talking or singing about.
Today´s sky is mercifully clouded, not dappled, Italy as North European. But tomorrow !

The Crane Bag Vol. 6. Nr. 2 1982

Frank Corcoran ” I´m A Composer ! You´re A WHAT ! ? ”

Times have changed since then. Since 1982 in Ireland. Have they ? They have not. No !

21. September 2012 at the Contemporary
Music Centre OPEN NIGHT :

Frank Corcoran : SWEENEY´S FAREWELL

A short electro-acoustic work from them lost nineties, it´s one of the strangest pieces I ever made – bits of flotsam and jetsam, ocean-bed choruses and marine-land, animal-human cries and clicks and zounds as poor Sweeney, the little mad King who went schizophrenic at the Battle of Máigh Rath in 632 A.D., must bid farewell to the world, to his world of Late Iron Age, Celtic Ireland. Bizarre.

I´ve been asked to write a line on Art and Surliness.
I suppose it´s in the sense of ” the personal emotion”, ” the composer´s mood-swings”, her ” self”. He´s depressed ? Has money-, family-, meaning- and value-worries? ( – whether surly or sunny is here surely a moot point; ” surly” is as much colour as attitude ). Behind this lurks a much bigger question – how transmute ( at a minimum ) good art into
gold freed from SELF ? Into sheeny silver , a la, say, Horace ? I do believe that great ( and great er) art has lifted itself further, higher if you will ( you will ) by its own sublime bootstraps than the composer´s autobiographical swill. How so ? Form, Vollendung, perfection of poise, surely that´s it , the crafted and the crafty ( not shifty ! ) art of making at the highest level. Aim high, surly toonsmith.

They buckle, suffer,
High melting Umbran mountains.
Listen! The frog´s plop!

In the hay-barn
Sleeps my Cello Concerto,
Its tones are still still.

Music is hot air,
Dipped in Orvieto White,
My cigar dying.

Basho´s frying frog
Beside this pool where we languish,
Hot. How long, Oh Lord?

In the deep blue pool
Three generations swimming,
She and he and I.

That´s right. Someone slapped up on YouTube Frank Corcoran´s CONCERTO FOR STRING ORCHESTRA ( David Robertson conducts the New Irish Chamber Orchestra. It is my year of 1982 ).”Corcoran´s beyond brilliant. It´s about the negative space as much as colour”.
Hmmm. Still, this is better than “He uses Rock root-position progressions and florid Qawwali music” which wins this week´s Pseuds´ Corner Prize.