Frank Corcoran

Why have Irish composers been ignored for so long?
Music critic Michael Dervan writes about his journey to discovering more Irish composers in his book The Invisible Art, which is nominated for a Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award.
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Music critic Michael Dervan (who has been music critic at the Irish Times since 1986) loves music – but realised as he grew up that Irish composers were often hidden musicians. With his book Invisible Art, he set out to address this. For the book, he commissioned pieces by a range of expert writers about Irish music from 1916 – 2016.
Ireland stands unique among the nations of the world in having a musical instrument, the harp, as its national emblem. Irish musicians of all hues are widely celebrated. Riverdance has been an international phenomenon for two decades. Flautist James Galway and the rock band U2 are known all over the world. Singer Sinéad O’Connor is famous enough for her behaviour on US chat shows to create international headlines. And traditional music is even more widely dispersed than the phenomenon of the Irish pub.

Composing the Island, the September 2016 festival of 27 concerts over 19 days, was a pretty hefty event by any measure. And it was not even designed to celebrate the full history of composition in Ireland, just the works of the last hundred years. There has been nothing quite like it before. Anywhere. Ever.
Yet the tradition of music it salutes has long had in Ireland a Cinderella-like position, an invisibility that can sometimes seem like the airbrushing or photoshopping into non-existence of a major art form.

Composers have felt the slight acutely. ‘I’m a Composer’—‘You’re a What?’ was the title Frank Corcoran gave an essay he contributed to The Crane Bag back in 1982. It was his way of explaining that Irish people simply didn’t see being a composer as a serious or full-time occupation.

Frank Corcoran, James Joyce, and the Poetics of Myth
A Celebration of Frank Corcoran at 70
James Joyce Centre
35 North Great George’s Street Thursday 26. November
8pm

In collaboration with

The James Joyce Centre

&

The Association of Irish Composers

PART ONE
Barra O Seaghdha: Frank Corcoran: An Introduction
Benjamin Dwyer: Joycean Aesthetics, Ethnic Memory and Mythopoetic Imagination in the Music of Frank Corcoran

PART TWO
Benjamin Dwyer Interviews Frank Corcoran

Frank Corcoran: Rhapsodietta Joyceana (world première) (Martin Johnston, cello)

Frank Corcoran: Variations on A Mháirín de Barra (1995) (Adele Johnston, viola)

Frank Corcoran: Seven Theses on Joyce and Music (Frank Corcoran)

Frank Corcoran: Joycespeak Musik (tape, 1995)

Frank Corcoran: Seven Miniatures (world première) (Alan Smale, violin)
1) Quasi Una Sarabanda
2) Andando
3) Alla Marcia
4) Alla Giga
5) Sempre Col Legno
6) Ferocissimo
7) Quasi Una Sarabanda

Frank Corcoran
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. He participated in the 2005 Joyce Summer School at Trieste University giving a paper entitled ‘Joyce and Music’. 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 (Ireland), 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 others. His music has been recorded on the Marco Polo, Wergo, Composers Art and Black Box labels. Recent large-scale works include the Cello Concerto, written for Martin Johnston and the Violin Concerto, composed fro Alan Smale, both premièred with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra; and Quasi Una Storia for String Orchestra (2015) for the North South Chamber Orchestra (New York). Frank Corcoran is a founding member of Aosdána and lives in Hamburg and Italy.

Three key Arts Council funded music organisations formed a partnership to deliver this initiative: the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, the Contemporary Music Centre and the Association of Irish Choirs. The publication,Choirland: An Anthology of Irish Choral Music, is a collection of 15 pieces by Irish composers for unaccompanied mixed choir.

The music ranges in difficulty from the simple to perform, to the more challenging. From arrangements of traditional melodies, new settings of familiar texts and strikingly original works, the selection encompasses a wide array of styles, which illustrate the diversity and vibrancy of Irish choral music. Each piece is presented with performance notes designed to aid conductors and singers alike, and the book includes a CD recording of the music by the National Chamber Choir of Ireland conducted by Artistic Director, Paul Hillier.

Representatives from all three organisations were present at the launch and the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, under Artistic Director Paul Hillier performed works by Ben Hanlon, Colin Mawby and David Fennessy, all of which are included in Choirland.

Choirland is available to purchase from www.cmc.ie

Contents:

Gerald Barry (b.1952) – Long time (2011)
Enda Bates (b.1979) – Pauper’s Lament (2010)
Seóirse Bodley (b.1933) – I will walk with my love (1981)
Brian Boydell (1917–2000) – Come Sleep (1964)
Rhona Clarke (b.1958) – Regina Coeli (from Two Marian Anthems) (2007)
Frank Corcoran (b.1944) – Caoine (1975)

Yes, the new Lyric FM CD will contain :

Frank Corcoran CELLO CONCERTO 2015. ( N.S.O. / Gavin Moloney Cond. / Soloist : Martin Johnson )

Frank Corcoran RHAPSODIC BOWING 2011 for 8 Celli .

Frank Corcoran 8 DUETTI IRLANDESI 2015 for Pianoforte ( Fergal Caulfield ) and Cello ( Martin Johnson )

Frank Corcoran RHAPSODIETTA JOYCEANA 2015 for Solo Cello ( Martin Johnson )

Their sound was gorgeous, the 8 Celli recording my ” RHAPSODIC BOWING ” , col legno rhythms sliding towards cello arcos and pizzicatos , these great celebrations of Bach-s theme too, and all mutating at the end into harmonics whose full impression was for excited me an orchestra of flutes. ( producing was great, also the peerless conducting ).
Also in RTE’s Studio One out at Belfield we made the last recordings of 8 DUETTI IRLANDESI for our Lyric CD, a
Spring 2017 release. Martin Johnson , cello, and Fergal Caulfield, piano, were peerless; every nuance and sunlight / shadow texture of these eight new duets …. . To complete the musical sandwich which makes up this Frank Corcoran Solo CD. then, the cello little solo, RHAPSODIA JOYCEANA which I composed last year ( based on the tone-names you find in ” jAmES jOyCE” , by the way ).
This will be a wonderful CD .

So

How about this?

____________

No, images didn’t come. ( What exactly is a good image for music ? )

Once music offered images on a plate, images of patriotic fervour, sexual longings, hunger for God, that kind of

thing. No, this power isn’t gone away.

Good crop of works composed and written and smeared and imagined .

Watch this corner. Watch out ! Watch.

Late September, cooling off, sneaked into October bits and shards of twilight, the Technicolour Thing , as the sun
( in summer killing ) settled in its nightly slide . Lake temperatures steady for wacky lake-swimmers, steadied up the hunted composer switching off after a hunted day; seek for more and more concise form. DON’T REPEAT what was excellent last year. Take courage . Lean out.

All snakes appear to take the coming winter serious; lizards still bob around my feet as Lollo De Cat plays bemused.

Pressetext (Englisch)

The 70th birthday of Frank Corcoran prompted his friend of many years Hans-Dieter Grünefeld, to compile this book. It contains interviews and articles on Frank Corcoran from several authors, and also the composer’s notes and memories of an action-packed musical past.

RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra at National Concert Hall | Live Review
https://www.goldenplec.com/livereviews/
martinjohnsonrtenationalsymphonyorchestranationalconcerthallreview/?
utm_campaign=twitter&utm_m… 2/7
Soloist Martin Johnson, freed from his usual duties as leader of the cello section, appears for a work
written much later in more ways that one. Composed nearly two hundred years after Mendelssohn’s
overture, and by a man more than half a century older, Frank Corcoran’s brand new cello concerto is an
extraordinary test of musicianship and virtuosity for Johnson, and it is a miraculous portrayal. Having
heard Johnson performing Gráinne Mulvey’s cello concerto a couple of months ago, where the cellist is
(perhaps intentionally) engulfed by the orchestra in a cacophonous losing battle, puts the pin-sharp
orchestration of Corcoran’s massive work into perspective; the cello is never once lost beneath the
massive forces behind him. It is emotionally meaningful and formally impressive, a concerto on the
symphonic scale of the Dvorak concerto namechecked by the composer in his lengthy, unpretentious
and entertaining programme note.

On 17 October 2014 21:46, Fbcorcoran wrote:

FOURTEEN MONA LISA SMILES ON THIS SOMEWHAT GOOD FRIDAY

1.

O Mona Lisa / Your smile pranced, stalking past me / You’re hiding nothing ?

2. Leonardo’s brush / Brushes her decollete / Out of time; deathless.

3. Lisa married him / her Tuscan solid merchant / No ! Money doesn’t stink .

4. Vinci begat me / It warmed me, her forced, damned smile / Her I paint and me.

5. Paint is expensive / Always clean all those brushes / Why is she smiling ?

6. Lisa married well / These small brush strokes are silent / Yes, she is dying

7. Her smile was fading / Quick ! We have not a second / ” You ! Call me Mona …. ”

8. Suspended, still young / Leonardo paints her now / Time is a short film

9. See that puckered mouth ? / Lisa di Leonardo / – The husband a bore !

10. “I am THAT Mona / ( No child in sight , but money ) / Leonardo weeps.

11.. “Bhuel, ni raibh se og… ” / ” Do bhi bean uasal ” a fhonn / Dunaim mo shuile.

12. Quid de femina ? / Sic depinxit magister / – ” Ars est celare ! ”

13. ” Dio e luce ? ” / Di dove , Leonardo, / le pennellate ?

14. Smear paint on canvas / Mona Lisa is trembling / Watch now ! Her smile lies !