Frank Corcoran

December 10 2011 :

North German Radio Hamburg:

Frank Corcoran´s Radiophonic Analysis of Gustav Mahler´s SECOND SYMPHONY.

What´s this about pre-, dawn and post- ? The light dappling these fair hill of the Ciminis? A neutrino is streaking down from CERN to Gran Sasso to race the “bright ring of day”, ochre and buttered gold painting just what outside my cloistered window?
This October night was still balm, still is balmy; bits of sticky sleep stubborn but willing. I ease into my very own October 3. No “Whence, Where, Why, Whither” questions are awake. It is now.

November 25 . 2011

Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin:
Irish Radio RTE premieres two new Frank Corcoran compositions:

CLARINET QUINTET ( Vanbrugh String Quartet and Fintan Sutton, Clarinet )

A DARK SONG ( Fintan Sutton, Bassclarinet Solo )

“The sea! Oh! The sea!” Now lovely late September washing or laving or lapping at the deep heart´s core ( see my newest work for solo harp ) , synaesthesia gone all Turnerish, dawns and evenings mirroring more than these fingers can. Eye cannot see nor ear hear nor vice versa at that Tirrhenian coast where Etruscans and Greeks and Parthians and Romans and Goths and Lombards and Huns and Franks all were suitably cowed and dandled and lulled and laid at this sand-and-sea line, like as the waves move toward the pebbled shore ( or its roar , if there is a storm out at Elba or Giglio Island ). Kinetic art ?Maybe Debussy´s La Mer-ish art was a swindle, eh ?

The September question before the lovely dawn fingers me, Rosy: Linked In to WHAT ? To whom ? And how differs our scurrying fingers´ e-linking from good old “communication” , I ask
tired them ? Whom do they “reach” ? Outreach ? Why do they wish to reach out ? eg. On the vast panorama of inter-human ( yes, this niggling preposition; precisely this ) “two become one” ( one flesh ? one virtual reality ? one confluence of radio-signals ? one mind and heart and song ? ) miracles, where and how profound is my Linking In ? Who is out there in that pre-dawn dawn caring for me or my rosy fingers ? ´Course my lovely linked in communicants could ask me the same electronic question, even now ? Link me in, Scottie. Call me ” in” . I´m in! In what my matins musing ? My early e-post, my post-Morse, post bush-telegraph, post smoke signals from two unwashed Red Indians´ponies´ blankets´palaver ? – A marriage of fine, interlinking minds, e-snailers all; eye can not see nor ear hear the inter-galactic whir of souls linked in a new ghostly or ghastly dance. Let´s do it! Link in or die! Why? Monads bow out and smile wearily. Linking. Missing. Keep on. Whirr! Hang on! The noosphere´s awash with e-whoosh as we ride a photon linking us. Linking us whither? Where two or three are gathered together, are linked in, in my name…. Tones or persons?

Mother cat plus four kittens are now examining : ”
My time in Hamburg ? Deepest provincial. Deepest woe. Deep or dreep, I drowned in
that ” Hamburg Musikhochschule ” ´s self-castrating self perpetuation. No future dreamable ?
All four kittens AGREE. LEAERSHIP WAS SHIT:

Apparently the heat will break tomorrow. Will the four kittens notice? Any change in their bounce and delight and their sense of play, hunger, thirst ? Apparently they do not have any concept of a ” concept” . No idea of an idea. Not an iota of the artistic in their gay artfullness. Schrödinger´s Cat was bliss itself, unaware of the theory of theory, of game-theory. Sheer bliss to be alive and feline. No worry about how to control the tones ( and not the other way around) ! Or –
the composer´s constant, distracting red herring – worry about the next or only or first performance of ” VARIATIONS ON MYSELF”….

So if we take the new piece, ” A DARK SONG” for Solo Bassclarinet ( premiere : Fintan Sutton , November 25 at the Royal Irish Academy of Music together with the Vanbrugh´s premiere – again with Fintan Sutton- of the RTE commissioned CLARINET QUINTET ) : what on earth is this short solo work about or ” about” ? My writhings? The composer´s breakfast ? The kittens´song ? ( They can´t. No ) Is it about shaping a lovely line ? Melodic curves ? Multicoloured intervals ? Musical ” ideas” ? Or what ? My free play ( nothing´s free nowadays … ) ?
With those few intervals ? And their derived ideas, eh ?

Pángur Bán is right: one kitten shinnies up a vine trellis; number two´s playing domino with a pebble on the terrace; three and four clean their predators´shining teeth on a rose-bush. A full harvest moon oversees the fun, feline, play, high jinks, cats´night theatre. Is this a rehearsal for a kitten´s future ? “Play” the right word here, eh ? Play as ec-stasis ? As delight in shaped activity without purpose? Animal ludens? Free or “free” this fun? ( Pángur Bán had no concept of that monk´s writhing or writing, of art, of the art of writing tones and pre-imagining their sounding ) Nor was the same harvest-moon especially interested in Sapph´s ladies´slow dance on the shore.

Our nights here at the September peperino Magic Table are a tad cooler, a jot, a degree of the thermometre at the Pizza Chimney. My drift is my continuous trouble and torment with six tones , F R Cis Es C A . Toxic. ( Apparently these 6 tones, with travail and with slaves´yells extracted from this typist contain my composer´s D.N.A ? )