Frank Corcoran

Actually it´s ” SEAN NUA” , ” OLD AND NEW”, “ever old and ever new” these clarinet colours in Mozart´s Clarinet Quintet ( I´ll be on again about his crafty assymetries in this 1789 work, late autumn, was it ? ).
My RTE commission, Frank Corcoran´s Clarinet Quintet, nears its premiere, this November 2011 in Dublin. Assymetries ? SEAN NUA ? What colours ? Tone? Leaps and sighs ? Four glowing strings plus clarinet ( I remember Mozart´s mighty leap of over two octaves? ) ? Yet in no way Neo-Mozartian. Um Gottes willen ! Mamma mia! My three movements have to find their own narrative, tell their own story of a few recurring tones. With musical logic. Hearable. Hearably new and yet connected. A string quartet plus a clarinet.

2009 – 2010 – 2011

IN THE DEEP HEART´S CORE Solo Harp
A DARK SONG Bassclarinet Solo
VARIATIONS ON MYSELF
Chamber Orchestra
FIVE SONGS Tenor and Piano
4 PIECES 2 Clarinets
8 HAIKUS SS AA TT BB Choir
SONGS OF TERROR AND LOVE Bass Voice
and ” Pierrot” Ensemble
CLARINET QUINTET ( Nov. 25 2011 Dublin )
VIOLIN CONCERTO ( Nov. 2 2012 ” )
FOUR ORCHESTRAL PRAYERS ( March 14 2010)
RHYPSODIC BOWING for 8 Celli
QUASI UNA SARABANDA ( Switzerland 2009 )
QUASI UNA FUGA ( for 18 Strings 2007 . Version for Large Orchestra 2010 )

White clamorous clang
And one black crow´s foot awry
Geese and crow chess-board.
( Frank Corcoran )

rírá na ngéanna fiáine
is préachán gaisciúil –
an gcloistí! ( Gabriel Rosenstock )

wild geese clamoring
and one pretentious
crow

-Issa, 1825

It takes courage. Molto.

Compose.

Well, I do. Yes. A fifth, a minor third or a fourth is. It´s not “quasi a fourth”, but the real interval ( No, I steer clear generally of quarter-tones; and in bigger ensemble works I can´t hear them as too many lines blur any wished for effect ). So it´s real intervals I write and use in all my musical tonal constructions and conceits. Nowadays it´s often a seven- or six-note row, a simple collection like ” F, D, Cis ( in German C Sharp ), Es ( in German E Flat ), C, A ” and its matrix or matrices. Simple ” B A C H ” stuff which triggers the musical narrative at take-off. Yes, ” A DARK SONG ” for Bass Clarinet Solo and ” IN THE DEEP HEART´S CORE” for Solo Harp are stirring. Stirring stuff.
I can´t keep going. I´ll keep going. It´s the breath of life. Your only man. Don´t write about it. Do it. Others did. Wipe the nib clean and let´s go with those intervals. Outside my window two warm night-owls bore each other. Bear with each other. Their
intervals, too, such as they are ( Pythagoras was an odd bird ) .

All women are mortal. I have struggled , day and night with that low F Sharp of the ( too rattling ) Concert Harp.
Four short autumnal weeks ago it was : how
blows my bassclarinet the initial E ?

Just checked on the diary for exactly one year ago. Keatsian the garden, as today. A clean heat. A friendly warm wind. Harvest home, though no melodeon music.

Those warm waves curl in below Capalbio ( ” An ceann bán ” / ” White head ” ) ; our Lazio Maremma has become Tuscan Maremma of the cowboys, the great man-slicing horns of the Maremma cows, beware a swish of a white cow´s head.

P.S. Our Irish art-music continues to be the most hopelessly unknown, unaccepted and unacceptable art in the Irish psyche, ar-canon and – pantheon. This used to depress the bejays outta me. Now it´s head down; continue the lonely slog to create, yes, compositional masterpieces, aere perennius…. I have no other solution. Have you, fly ?

I have now added you, Frank Corcoran, as a new composer to my Classical Composers
Database: http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/corcoran