Frank Corcoran

2009 is a Joseph Haydn Anniversary Year so I have produced for North German Radio Hamburg my radiophonic analysis of Haydn´s panmotivic “Oxford Symphony” . All Haydn´s symphonic themes are related. All Haydn´s motifs I can derive from that odd, tonally unsteady first theme of his opening movement. Which is melodically ( = ” motivically ” ) derived from , as always, Haydn´s opening Slow Introduction. Am I serious ? Yes. The whole thing flows from those opening 5 tones ? Yes. That little motivic descent of the first violins at the very beginning of his symphonic energy , eh ? Yes.

For NDR I have done several radio-analytic / motivophonic programmes that X-rayed giants of my Tipperary musical past , eg. Mozart´s G Minor String Quintet, of course, then, his G Minor Symphony, Brahms´s last great Symphony Nr. 4. and several more. I juxtaposed textlessly smithereens and orchestral bits and symphonic joists and pillars and , well, chapters plus paragraphs.

QUASI UNA FUGA

Frank Corcoran

These last years I have composed several works for different instrumental combinations with titles such as ” Quasi Un Canto” for Orchestra, ” Quasi Un Concerto” for Chamber Ensemble, etc. The “Quasi” of the different titles refers to the fact that nowadays nobody is fully innocent anymore; this composer knows too much about the various musical traditions of our globe, of human history to be able to feign naivety.
“Quasi Una Fuga” is no neo-Baroque or neo-Bachian composition. ( – Stravinsky´s weakest works were those where he sinned in this respect . I must not repeat this mistake! ). It is my salute to all the thousand fugues I had as a young music-student to compose and it is at the same time my farewell to fugal writing and my bow to the phenomenon of counterpoint itself. It is not a fugue, yet it is unmistakably ” quasi” a fugal one-movement work for string-orchestra.
You clearly hear the subject with a limping accompaniment as it ascends into ethereal heights, its descent, its variants and side-shoots , how my “quasi” exposition develops and variates and becomes lush string-foliage . Everything grows so naturally from the opening ” soggetto” till, near the end , it morphs into the Early Celtic Chant , ” Ibunt Sancti”, which , tradition tells us, was the hymn St. Brendan and his twelve intrepid monks, Atlantic sailors surely extraordinary, sang as they prepared their supper on a broad-backed ( and, one must suppose, unbaptized ) Atlantic whale somewhere up near 6th. century Greenland.
My “Quasi Una Fuga” hymns, yes, total counterpoint, total motivic proliferation and total holistic growth. This is totally stringy music !

Nowadays I divide my time between Hamburg and Italy. That´s correct. In the main. However, one of the strangest electro-acoustic works I made ( – they´re all in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris ) was
that WDR commission, ” QUASI UNA MISSA” , of 1999. The radio´s small Cologne hotel was just across the square from the Cathedral , just behind the Rhine. I´d start the day´s intensive composing early; I mean early: they opened dark doors at six , I remember. Then I´d shuffle down to the still totally deserted banks of the mighty river Rhine. My composer´s day had begun.
The making of my second WDR commission, ” Sweeney´s Vision”, two years before that, was quite different. The light was different in Berlin. His bright Einstein river-bank where the Technical University´s Electronic Studio swives the water, was different. The very Spree was different. April, well, a very different month.
Different again was the hot 2008 London performance of my very ( – well NO! , not ” very!” ) early PIANO TRIO with Darragh Morgan and his great Trio this past July 1 . It was a kind of old London granary. The Warehouse. Wood , no water. My work has stood the tensile toughness of time. Thirty Frank Corcoran years. In London I was invited to remember every detail of having imagined that ( for the pianist´s bleeding fingers ) fiendish opening page for the piano solo where I smashed the tyranny of my bar-line, – but then I had to bring in the cello´s explosione tremolando and , after this furious dialogue got started, a high violin cantilena on a totally other plane, all three moving independently. Fiendish. Memory. My poiesis.
Most recent work for altered double-bass ( – all four strings up, yes, a fourth ) and piano, the 2008 ” Quasi Un Duo” hasn´t been heard in Germany or Ireland. Not yet; great USA ” Duo Moderno” of great Allan von Schenkel premiered it just before Christmas in Bucharest and snowed-in Cluj . Certainly. We will.

I was there. As it happened in Bergamo.
It was my 1994 ICE-ETCHINGS NR. 1 for, as it happened to happen, 9 wind-instruments. Later, I will release THAT letter which will tell all….

FOUR CONCERTINI OF ICE ( 1993 ) , being a predecessor , was subtly different. For the Düsseldorfer Sinfoniker, Cond. Mark-Andreas Schlingensiepen, I had to grapple,as it happened ( – it happened ! ) with the weighing-in of his following : Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Violin, Violin, Violoncello, Double-bass, Percussion. See ? ( – Whereas my newest, sweetest ” QUASI UNA SARABANDA” ( 2009 . 11´. ) for the Swiss Ensemble ” Antipodes” is, yes, a dream : Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon , String Quintet.

2009 will also see the birth of my new ” Quasi Un Preludio” for Solo Violin ; also, I announce it here, of my “Quasi Una Sarabanda” ( – see above ) , but , then, also of hotly baked VIOLIN CONCERTO Nr. 1. for Orchestra and Solo Violin.

WDR 3 Hörproben 3.3.2000

Frank Corcoran´s Sinfonien Nr. 2,3 und 4. National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland / Colman Pearce
Marco Polo 8.225107 ( LC 9158 )

includes Frank Corcoran´s : ” Ich kam erst spät zur Kunstmusik. Die Klanglandschaft meiner Kindheit lebt weiter in mir…. ” Also: ” Der Komponist, geboren 1944 im County Tipperary, ist ein sehr gebildeter Mann… And, as they say, so on.

CORCORAN : Families of this name may, I dare say, be descended either from the ´O Corcráin sept whose homeland was around Lough Erne in Co. Fermanagh, or the Mac Corcráin sept which belonged to Co. Offaly. I see also Corkerry, Corkery, ´O Corcra, Corcair, Composer etc.

Yep, it was Lothar Zagrosek who conducted the O.R.F.Symphony Orchestra ( Premiere : 10 November 1981 . Vienna ) in my Symphony Nr. 1 , ” SYMPHONIES OF SYMPHONIES OF WIND INSTRUMENTS”.

Hear, altogether other: NDR, WDR, HS, Radio Bremen, SFB, BR, ORF, RTE, BBC, CONCERTZENDER,
LYRIC FM, RTE, DLRBerlin, RAI TRE, RIAS, ORF, Croatian, National Public Radio USA, CDC, Spanish Radio, Belgian etc. etc.

February 9 2009 Czech Radio : Frank Corcoran ” Quasi Una Missa” ( WDR commission 1999 , it won
the Swedish EMS Prize 2004 ) and ” Sweeney´s Vision” ( WDR commission 1997,
it won the Bourges Festival premier prix 1999 ) .

February 22. NDR Choir and Ms. I. Psarewa : Frank Corcoran´s ” 9 Aspects Of An Irish Poem”
for Large Choir and Violin Solo .

Frank Corcoran was a member of the International Composers´ Jury Valentino Bucchi Prize, Rome, the Composition , Citta`di Trieste ( several times ) and also of the 2005 World Music Days / ISCM
hosted by CANTUS , Zagreb, Croatia.

In the October 2008 World Haiku Review Vol. 6, Issue 4, this, my little Pratoleva pearl miniature,

was awarded an ” Honourable Mention”:

Season of mellow

Yellow fruit; ripeness is all

Too tired to die

( Frank Corcoran 2008 )

The Swiss octet , “Antipodes”, with Egidius Streiffzug , violin, will premiere my new ” QUASI UNA
SARABANDA” for Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon and String Quintet ( 2007 ) on June 19 – 21 in Bern, Zürich and Basle.

1. Great gusts of air-stream

Roughly unravel my sleeve

A last butterfly

2. My young love, Buddha,

Came to softly sleeping me

And our sap rising

3. Issa and Buddha

Were lovers; – Lawd how they did

Swoon under a pine

4. It yaws and weaves and

Tacks now in the yellow air

My last butterfly

5. ” Who has ever seen

A poem lovely as this ?

-Our Spring pine-Buddha?

6. Soon it´ll be Easter ?

The speckled bean and pine

Burst, pulse and become

7. How tall young, new pines !

His Next Coming will be thus:

Thrusting. Up. Higher.

8 Does our Buddha pine ?

For Spring´s budding pine-trees´cones ?

Come Her / His Kingdom !

9. Fair daffodils ! He

Weeps not to see fine-hued ye!

Churn-butter yellow!

On February 22 2009 the North German Radio Choir under its new Chief Conductor, Philip Ahmann, will give the German premiere of Frank Corcoran´s

QUASI 9 ASPECTS OF AN IRISH POEM ( Gabriel Rosenstock ) for Solo Violin and Large Choir.

Nine times I set this little 3 -liner poem in Irish ( 1982 Migmars ed. ) which is as perfect as a 17th. c. Japanese Haiku. ( Basho “composed” his ” Winterreise” in almost Early-Irish nature-lyrics ).
“As tobar duaigh spéire / Líonann crain / A nguth. ”
My earliest Tipperary musical remembrance is of the ballad-singer, Paddy Reddan, bellowing his songs at the weekly fair-day, now long gone, in Borrisokane. Even as a child I mused over that age-old problem, what came first ? The music or the words ? Rosenstock´s poised poem both means and does not quite mean: ” From the ink-will of the sky / Trees / Fill their beaks!” Nine times I set it, I compose nine choral settings of my poet-friend´s elegant brevity; these are nine attempts to paint the vowel-colours of his gossamer syllabic construction, the solo and choral ” A” and ” As” and “Tob-” and ” -Ar”, etc. My solo violin´s prelude and interludes bow, pluck , become the choir´s colour-tones.