Frank Corcoran

Dear Frank

I am writing from The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) regarding an upcoming exhibition entitled The Moderns scheduled to open in IMMA from 19th October 2010 to 25th March 2011. This exhibition will attempt to look at the most innovative and experimental developments in Ireland during the period from approx 1900 -1975 mainly revolving around Irish art but also considering these developments in the context of the broader culture of the day, tracing the interconnections between art forms including music, literature, film and architecture. The exhibition is curated by IMMA Director, Enrique Juncosa, and Christina Kennedy, Senior Curator, Collections, and will launch IMMA’s 20th Anniversary in 2011. I have attached a summary of the intent of the exhibition.

We would like to feature in the exhibition the developments in modern music in Ireland through a selection of significant music works. To this end we would like to display a selection of 7-8 original musical scores in vitrines in the exhibition, and also possibly reproduced in the exhibition catalogue. We would very much like to feature one of your compositions in this context and the work we would like to suggest is:

Frank Corcoran

Dektet – 1971

Rachel Talbot (soprano), David Adams (piano), Daedalus Wind Quintet, R.I.A.M. Percussion Ensemble / Richard O’Donnell, Frank Corcoran (piano)
Wed, Oct 17, 2001, 01:00

6 Bagatelles for Wind Quintet – Ligeti

Hebraische Balladen – Ulrich Leyendecker

Music for the Book of Kells; Wind Quintet-Sweeney’s Wind-Cries; Trauerfelder-Gort an Bhroin – Frank Corcoran

Ligeti’s Bagatelles of 1953 now seem to him to be “absolutely prehistoric”. It is true that they sound rather like a baroque suite with touches of Stravinsky and Bartok, but they are eminently listenable to, have an individual voice and still sound fresh. The Daedalus Wind Quintet played them with bite and rhythmic vivacity.

The other work for wind quintet last Sunday in the Hugh Lane Gallery was Sweeney’s Wind-Cries by Frank Corcoran who, born in Tipperary and resident in Hamburg, combines a knowledge of Irish culture, including the prehistoric, with a compostitional freedom acquired on the Continent. In his music it is as if the sounds of nature are transformed, but only half tamed, so there is a nervous balance between discipline and what sounds like licence.

Each of his works immediately creates an atmosphere, strong but impossible to particularise. Music for the Book of Kells opens with a solo for tubular bells, which may suggest the life of monasticism, but when the other members of the R.I.A.M. Percussion Ensemble join in, with much use of the bass drum, it seems that more elemental forces are brought into play. And when the piano enters, toward the end, played by the composer, it utters primitive sounds not at all like a piano.

Gort an Bhroin is perhaps the best embodiment of the recital’s title: “Irish and German Tonal Landscapes”. In it four percussionists make a threnody for the victims of Auschwitz. The work opens with tubular bells, but with the accompaniment of a snare drum. The two effects, rightly, are a world apart.

Hi Frank,

Many thanks for your email, I hope you’re well.

We don’t have these works as yet – could you send them in when you get a chance please:

Four Last Words From The Cross for SATB . 2015 ( edition Ferrimontana ) 4′
An Irish Christmas Carol SATB 2015. ( edition Hayo ) 4′
3 Pieces for Violin and Pianoforte 2015 ca. 12.
Music to James P Graham’s SAVING SEAHENGE 2015. ca. 9.’

Don Francisco
it’s up on youtube at http://youtu.be/rZNq-JAXgJU

Your ‘channel’ is at http://www.youtube.com/user/QuasiunCanto
This is where you will see all of the videos you upload.

What door to my self ?
The tricky, slippery threshold
Is disappearing.

How many ruins
Make up a self’s dream-landscape ?
The cat has fever.

Our thermometer
Splinters in this roiling heat.
Just keep the head cool.

Fierce warmth in the sun
The Alps groaning and boiling.
May we stop marching ?

Subject: Fwd: Fróinsias an Fhéin

tairseach an Fhéin
is ea an uile ní –
fothracha

The Poet slips in
Through his own portal .No self.
No thing. No language.

Immense sliding light
Beams now on Ungaretti
On his ruined self

Unwrap my onion
All my healthy, roasting selves
I am my portal

( Fróinsias O Corcorain As Pratoleva. Samhradh 2012 )

Na, immerhin ein SEHR schöner Abend. Ärgere Dich nicht über postcolonial manure, von Ärger bekommt man graue Haare (ha, ha). Joyce ist eine Ikone, da muss man nicht mehr nachdenken oder gar weiter denken, an die Gegenwart denken…. Was lernen wir aus der Vergangenheit? Nicht viel oder nichts. Sie ist nur ein nicht zu übersehender Appendix, am besten abschneiden. – Es ist immer das gleiche Elend in der so called Intellectual Community, von den Kulturarbeiten ganz zu schweigen. Wichtiger als Stringenz ist, die Kräfteverhältnisse und deren Ausschläge auf die Potenzen der Gegenwart zu diagnostizieren, damit kein Stachel aus der Historie stört.

– Well, he was right , eh ? I like his ” intellectual manure !” Hits the nail on its Irish head…

16. July 2004. Seamus Heaney to me:

” Here I have two pages from you with notice of RTE “QUASI UNA VISIONE ” etc. to be done on March 12. next year …Is there more ?
My head’s a sieve, but I don’t think there was a covering letter. I’ve no e-mail…

Meanwhile, long in the antler as I am, I’m going with the young bucks for a “stag week-end…”

Heaney astray,

Seamus. “

07.12.1978 Monkstown . The Irish Composer Trust.

FRANK CORCORAN to the Irish Times :

“Sir, I didn’t sleep a wink last night after reading that Charles Acton’s copy of my COLLECTION ONE LP
was ” so badly warped that the start of each side is hard to judge ” ( December 5 1978 ) I will of course be getting him a perfect copy straight away. Ditto for any customer who is similarly had. ( I imagine the number is very small ) …
Meanwhile I’ve DONE it ! COLLECTION ONE is the FIRST launching of his own work in this form EVER by an Irish composer. It is a mile-stone in Irish music. I believe passionately in the Lp’s label, “Selfhelp”.

The music of Irish composers must be played, replayed, judged and discussed… It is sad that no umbrella organization has taken on distribution.
But in the meantime I will go it alone.

Yours etc. Frank Corcoran

Soon I will list and publish some of my immortal musical yearnings of 2016 , also a rich harvest .

( Dissemination , multiplication, sing along and rejoice with the composer – THERE lies the dead

dog buried. )

Ruminating freely now on the American composer’s death, John(ny) Eaton, he of early Synket and his
great ( Old Greek libretti, also by my dead friend, Anglo-Irish poet from where I loved, Radda-in-Chianti, Patrick Creagh ) microtonal operas, vast Indiana
kind-of-thing. Nothing new on a brain haemorrhage, Johnny. Ave atque vale once again.
Basho says it
more, much more elegantly:

In the cicada’s cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die.

A RECENT RESUME BY A FRIEND . YES :

just listened to 2nd episode of Crosscurrents – a very very good programme – remembering those difficult times for all of us indeed….I don’t know how we kept going, but we did. You came across very well in the interviews – enjoyed hearing it.

Thankfully, there’s a bit more respect now, but I think composers are as ‘unknown’ as ever by the general public….we’ve done what we can, Frank!