Frank Corcoran

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Corcoran
20 January 2012 – 1:21pm
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Composer(s):
Corcoran
Works:
Mad Sweeney; Music for the Book of Kells; Wind Quintet; Sweeney’s Vision
Performer:
Frank Corcoran (speaker); Das Neue Werk NDR Ensemble, Percussion Modern/Dieter Cichewiecz, Stuttgart Wind Quintet/Willy Freivogel
Label:
Black Box
Catalogue Number:
BBM 1026
Performance:
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Sound:
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There’s an enticing new-music culture in Ireland, and though much of its product is rarely heard in English concert venues (or Welsh or Scottish, one suspects), these releases from Black Box will play their part in fostering a closer awareness of the subject. While Frank Corcoran and John Buckley represent the middle generation, being born in 1944 and 1951 respectively, Gráinne Mulvey and Deirdre Gribbin are of younger stock, of 1966 and 67 vintage, so the range is evenly balanced both in age and gender. Through the medium of chamber music each composer focuses on an aspect of poetic understanding that avoids, with Corcoran’s exception, the issue of a distinctly national idiom. Corcoran writes music for the Book of Kells, and for Heaney’s translation of the Middle Irish text Mad Sweeney. His ‘macro counterpoint’ and bright and stormy sounds evoking the truth of the Irish dream landscape sound less well in performance than in his description.

Frank Corcoran

‘The loss of culture in Ireland is why I am interested in mythopoetic remembrance and imagination.’

Born 1944 in Borrisokane, Tipperary, Frank Corcoran studied philosophy, music, ancient languages and theology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, University College Dublin and the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome. Further studies in composition were undertaken with Boris Blacher in Berlin. In 1980, he took up a composer fellowship the Berliner Künstlerprogramm. In the 1980s, he taught in Berlin, Stuttgart and Hamburg, where he was Professor of Composition and Theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater. He was a Fulbright Visiting Professor and a Fulbright Scholar in the U.S. in 1989 and 1990, and has been a guest lecturer at, among others, CalArts, Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), Princeton University and New York University. Corcoran’s output includes orchestral, choral, chamber and electroacoutic music. His Joycepeak – Musik won the Studio Akustische Kunst 1995, Sweeney’s Vision won the Bourges Festival Premier Prix in 1999, and Quasi Una Missa won the 2002 Swedish E.M.S. Prize. Two Unholy Haikus took first prize at the Cork International Choral Festival in 2012 and his Eight Haikus was awarded first prize at the International Foundation for Choral Music in 2013. Corcoran’s music has been performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Crash Ensemble (Dublin), the Cantus Chamber Orchestra (Zagreb), Wireworks Ensemble (Hamburg), the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and Antipodes (Switzerland), among many other ensembles and orchestras. He is a founding member of Aosdána and lives in Hamburg and Italy.

Photograph Tony Carragher. Frank Corcoran at his home in Pratoleva, Viterbo, Italy, 15 July 2013.

See also:

composer page on cmc.ie
www.frankcorcoran.com/

Selected Works

Two Meditations for Speaker and Orchestra (1973)
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Nine Medieval Irish Epigrams (1973)
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Three Pieces for Orchestra (1974 rev 1976)
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Piano Trio (1978)
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Symphonies of Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1981)
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Music from the Book of Kells (1990)
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Quasi una Missa (1999)
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Frank Corcoran – Symphony No. 3
Frank Corcoran – Symphony No. 3

Symphonies of Symphonies – Frank Corcoran
Symphonies of Symphonies – Frank Corcoran

I am the Sea
I am the Sea

Video

Short film by Mark Linnane commissioned and produced by CMC on the occasion of the composer’s 70th birthday in 2014

Frank Corcoran talking with Tristan Rosenstock

Selected articles

Benjamin Dwyer, “Joycean Aesthetics, Ethnic Memory and Mythopoetic Imagination in the Music of Frank Corcoran,” in COLONY

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HOW AND WHERE TO START.

Me and Gawd an´ me, women, music and noise, my parents, pigs´ orchestra, three Hegiras, hunger for recognition of the cloth, of the good life, the truth, light gleams in the South, water-babies, dreams, kneeling female slaves, masochism mechanism, toothaches, heartaches, death or Death, loneliness on Skellig, being wanted or being loved, madness and early misery, the castrating, wet Celtic football, that´s enough as a start, maybe.

Whence then: Cartesian carping ? Black mood or black bile? Need for parallel lines, yet assymetry in my musical forms, the
Small Nobel For Deep Drilling, that second long “0” in ” theolOgian”, or drowning just at that south landing at Skellig.
Whither my gait, lope, sobbing hobble ?

Why me now here typing ?
My life as a mess, a palimpsest, a swiftly running film-footage, grace, accidental design, as an orchestral composition with strictly metred bits and macrocontrapuntal bits, the raw and the over-cooked, pottage and porridge, wry humour and being appalled.

I bawled crying , six´n a half, as I knocked at kindly Sister Frances´s piano-teacher´s door and, she inviting, of course, told me never to say ” It´s just me!”
Yes I can still see or feel that tactile little tonic for the left hand ( It was “The Rosebud Walz” ) while the melody for the right, no doubt high compositional class, is now gone for ever.

On behalf of Frank Corcoran, please find the mp3s for Quasi Una Missa here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/akbwxnofo3ri6a2/AABXPpTYdyG2nS_jbkXdIv9ja?dl=0 .

Friday 2 November 2012, 8pm, National Concert Hall

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra 2012-2013 Season: Main Season

SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE AND LOSS
Arvo Pärt Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten [6’]

Frank Corcoran Violin Concerto (world premiere) [17’]

Rachmaninov Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27 [60’]

Alan Smale violin

Christopher Warren-Green conductor

RTÉ NSO LEADER ALAN SMALE GIVES THE FIRST PERFORMANCE of Frank Corcoran’s ‘taut, lean, lyrical, leppin’’ and song-like Violin Concerto that combines, the composer says, ‘fiddling fun, violinistic seriousness and art’s sorrow, and fast, furious, last orchestral thoughts’. Estonian Arvo Pärt’s bewitching, prayer-like elegy for Britten is a haunting recognition of a lost kindred spirit, and Rachmaninov’s swooningly beautiful Second Symphony could have no better champion than the dynamic conductor Christopher Warren-Green.

Soundings, 7pm

In Conversation

Conductor Colman Pearce with Irish composer Frank Corcoran

‘O Cormac, grandson of Conn,’ said Carbery, ‘what is the worst for the body of man?’

‘Not hard to tell,’ said Cormac. ‘Sitting too long, lying too long, long standing, lifting heavy things, exerting oneself beyond one’s strength, running too much, leaping too much, frequent falls, sleeping with one’s leg over the bed-rail, gazing at glowing embers, wax, biestings, new ale, bull-flesh, curdles, dry food, bog-water, rising too early, cold, sun, hunger, drinking too much, eating too much, sleeping too much, sinning too much, grief, running up a height, shouting against the wind, drying oneself by a fire, summer-dew, winter-dew, beating ashes, swimming on a full stomach, sleeping on one’s back, foolish romping.’

‘O Cormac, grandson of Conn,’ said Carbery, ‘what is the worst pleading and arguing?’

‘Not hard to tell,’ said Cormac.
‘Contending against knowledge, contending without proofs, taking refuge in bad language, a stiff delivery, a muttering speech, hair-splitting, uncertain proofs, despising books, turning against custom, shifting one’s pleading, inciting the mob, blowing one’s own trumpet, shouting at the top of one’s voice.’

[Pg 109]

‘O Cormac, grandson of Conn,’ said Carbery, ‘who are the worst for whom you have a comparison?’

‘Not hard to tell,’ said Cormac.
‘A man with the impudence of a satirist, with the pugnacity of a slave-woman, with the carelessness of a dog, with the conscience of a hound, with a robber’s hand, with a bull’s strength, with the dignity of a judge, with keen ingenious wisdom, with the speech of a stately man, with the memory of an historian, with the behaviour of an abbot, with the swearing of a horse-thief,

and he wise, lying, grey-haired, violent, swearing, garrulous, when he says “the matter is settled, I swear, you shall swear.”‘

‘O Cormac, grandson of Conn,’ said Carbery, ‘I desire to know how I shall behave among the wise and the foolish, among friends and strangers, among the old and the young, among the innocent and the wicked.’

‘Not hard to tell,’ said Cormac.
‘Be not too wise, nor too foolish, be not too conceited, nor too diffident, be not too haughty, nor too humble, be not too talkative, nor too silent, be not too hard, nor too feeble.

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Here are the details for the performance of your piece: Caoine

Friday February 24th, 1pm Open Dress Rehearsal, The Mahony Hall, The Helix, DCU, Dublin 9

Saturday February 25th 8pm, Carlingford Heritage Centre, Co Louth

Sunday February 26th 3.30pm, St Ann’s Church, Dawson St., Dublin 2.

ELEGIES

Benjamin Britten: Five Flower Songs

Herbert Howells: Take him, earth, for cherishing

(our performance dedicated to the memory of Vaclav Havel)

Gerald Finzi: Three Short Elegies

Brian Boydell: Two Madrigals

Enda Bates: Pauper’s Lament / A Stealing Sadness

Frank Corcoran: Caoine

MARY DULLEA
Solo Piano
Monday 17th January 2011, 19 30 hr.

Programme of music by Irish and Bavarian composers.

Versicherungskammer Bayern, Maximilianstrase 53, 80538 Munich.

Frank Corcoran Nine Pratoleva Pearls

SAMOBOR MUSIC FESTIVAL
6th INTERNATIONAL COMPOSERS COMPETITION “New Note” CROATIA 2017.

Total value of prizes: 4000 €
Deadline for entries: June 4th 2017.
COMPETITION REGULATIONS

1. The competition is open to composers of all ages and nationalities
2. More than one score per composer is permitted
3. All submitted works must have been composed after December 31st 2010 and not awarded a prize in any other competition
4. It is possible to submit works previously performed, but not already published or professionally recorded for commercial use.

GENRE

1. Composition for ZAGREB SOLOISTS (www.zagrebacki-solisti.com/en)
2. Use of tape or live electronics is not permitted
3. Orchestration: 6 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, 1 contrabass
4. Duration: Up to 15 minutes

PRIZES

The First Prize – 2500€ (bruto-includingtaxes) and the concert performance by ZAGREB SOLOISTS on Samobor Music Festival – October7th 2017.
The Second Prize – 1000 € (bruto-including taxes)
The Third Prize – 500 € (bruto-including taxes)
JURY

SRETEN KRSTI?
Zagreb Soloists concert master, violinist (Germany/Serbia – Zagreb Soloists), partner of International Composers Competition „New Note”
NIKŠA GLIGO
musicologist
(Croatia)
FRANK CORCORAN
composer (Ireland)
SRE?KO BRADI? composer and Artistic Director
(Croatia)