Frank Corcoran

– Just around the corner ….  is busy being born / being produced. More anon. Sooner than ….

F. C.

This is a torso. A torn off poster . Torn. Important. We do it .

 
New Works for Chamber Orchestra by Composers from Ireland and the US
FRANK CORCORAN Quasi una storia
MAX LIFCHITZ Frozen Sounds
TERYY RILEY Halfwolf Dances Mad in Moonlight
WILLIAM SCHI

Up there in Pavia’s fine royal dungeons Theoderic’s Visigoth (  rope  or wire ? )  was tightened around his splitting head-ache till the two eyes ( consoled by philosophy ) first bulged and then popped.So what meaneth  Boethius’s  sublime ” Nunc fluens facit tempus, nunc stans aeternitatum ”  at all at all              ? ( where’s the subject, noun, etc. ? )

I’ve loved and I’ve chased Boethius’s sublime Nunc Stans. He writes ( he doesn’t say how ….  )  that it “makes” the eternal.  ( In it time stands still ;but  he is not meaning  ” endlessly during ”   time, I take it ? )  And his Nunc Fluens ( like honey ? Like sun-flower oil ? like butter melting under an Italian sun  ? )  “makes”  time. And you can encounter both in Beethoven’s Opus 131, can you  ? In Mr. B’s time music’s eternal ?  Or is “nunc” an adverb after all ?  And is ” tempus” meant as a nominative ? Know what I mean,   my two eyes bulging ?  Do yours ?  Now ?

Hmmm.  Must ask around in New York, my Quasi Una Storia”  for 13 Strings  enduring and durating and circling sneakily around my own Nunc Stans. Plenty of time – sorry, eternity – for both ?  Quasi.

QUASI  UNA  STORIA      for   13   Strings

In the nineties I composed a series of ” Quasi ” works for several different music- genres , eg.  QUASI UNA FUGA,  QUASI UN LAMENTO,  QUASI UN CONCERTO, and so on.
It was thus clear that the composer today is no longer innocent; she knows too much music of the Western past  written in the various forms. Thus ” Quasi Una Storia”  is quasi telling a story about this composer’s self-consciousness in dealing with music for all my 13 strings.
Music – in common with the other arts  (  if a little less so )  – has always  striven to imitate, to tell a story, to narrate. But this need not result in merely telling a story about a storm ( see Beethoven’s “Pastoral ” ) ,  or about the composer’s  love-lorn heart ( see Tchaikowsky’s ” Pathetique”  )  or  the hero’s derring – do ( see Strauss’  “Till Eulensgiegel ” )  etc.
The highest , most  “abstract”  music  tells a story about its own musical nature ( see so many Mozart symphonies ) , about its very own tones and their vicissitudes within the musical work itself. Beethoven’s  Fifth Symphony is a story ” about ” its first four well-known and – worn tones.
So my one movement ” QUASI UNA STORIA ”  tells, sings and recounts,  refers to its opening musical statement for the solo first violin; it soon appears also for solo cello and even for solo bass.
My  “Quasi” Story pits constantly the one and the many , the  soli and the tutti.  It revels in the string colours of  great compositions of the past which were composed fo rthe sonorous richness that a string orchestra posesses, from the sheen of a Henry Purcell or a Johann Sebastian Bach right up to great works of the 20 th. c. by a Bartok , a Ligeti or a Lutoslawsky . My  opening building block  expands its nervous tic idea untill all 13 strings are busy with their stringiness, their string thing.  In the middle of my story about these string tones, the colour grows darker, then brighter again. (  As in so many recent Corcoran compositions, I use once again my Corcoran’s   Seven Tones, my scale comprising of  G  A flat  C sharp  D  E flat  F sharp and A,  my beloved ABC  .  )
At the end an impassioned plea on the double-bass brings back my story’s opening  music. We have come the full cycle. My “Quasi” story is ended.

FRANK  CORCORAN

CELLO  CONCERTO

( March 13 2015 Dublin Premiere . National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, dir. Kenneth Montgomery. Soloist: Martin Johnson  )
As long as I can remember, I always wanted to compose a concerto for cello and orchestra, but I lacked the courage and the means till I had written my  violin concerto ( premiered by Alan Smale with the N.S.O. under Christopher Warren-Green in 2012 ). As soon as that work was born , I felt I was free . And my soloist, Martin Johnson, then said a mighty thing to me: ” Frank, the cello must soar. Let it soar. Let it sing. ”
So I did. With its four movements and over half an hour duration the cello concerto is longer, bigger . It hovers between Dvorak and Lutoslawsky – of course. It has to . As in both its mighty predecessors,  the solo instrument here must sing in its bass and chalumeau and tenor and contralto and dizzyingly high soprano register, right through the introductory first movement, the cantabilISSIMO slow movement, a wild screaming  scherzo and a   “we calm the mighty forces, we , wrap up all ”  last movement.
In this work ( as in several other recent works, including the violin concerto  ) I use only my Frank Corcoran’s  Magical Scale  ( these seven notes:   G, A flat, C sharp, D, E flat, F sharp and A ). Only these seven give me the complete linear and harmonic material of all my movements, their building-blocks and my cement. )  .
Three trumpets with lower brass bray a “motto theme ” at the beginning of the first movement. It comes again several times in the course of this movement – and indeed in later movements. The cello enters immediately as a contending answer in this proud agony of  ” Me Solo against Them All ;  the shadow of  Bach’s great Sarabande from the C Major Solo Cello Suite is seldom absent. Here is epic struggle  against a vast array of percussion ..
My Slow Movement is  A Great Song,  – An t- Amhran Mor . Its quasi – quote of Dvorak’s hymn in his slow movement of his cello concerto  runs right through this movement . Oboe and woodwind sing it in the opening bars, whereas four horns have the last word  ( – and watch for my beautiful version for 4 divided celli just before this lyrical music comes to an end ).

My third movement is a  “quasi un scherzo”. It must be certainly the most violent music I’ve ever written, or indeed imagined.  Running through is a rhythmic corset of 5,4,3 and 3  beats in the bar at a cracking gallop of crotchet = 132.  No strings but belting , shouting, shrieking brass , often only one- or two voices with the crushing weight of so many drums and brake-drums and tom-toms and more – all try to crush the solo cello’s human scream in its highest register. In vain they try .
My last movement’s function then is to reconcile bits and smithereens from the previous three , find closure , yet without any cheap solution, to seek a triumphant finish after the all cello’s last scurryings. “In my end is my beginning “.

Each of the four movements has elements of a solo cadenza without ever actually furnishing us with any  extended 19th. c. solo Paganinian cadenza  as such . The cello has to rule its vast orchstra AND to fly free as it  ” extend the bounds of the musically possible ” ( Debussy ) .

FRANK  CORCORAN

4. April 2015          Ndr-Kultur  PRISMA MUSIK

Frank Corcoran hears Mozart’s Symphony Nr. 29 and his “Jupiter” .

HR 2 – Kultur  (  Frankfurt Radio )

Frank Corcoran Composer Portrait

21.30  –  22.30

Weep.

Certainly a Happy and a New year . All our myth. May we co-dream, conjoin.

Once upon a time there was marketing. At the ( imminent )  Golden Horn  I will certainly pray in Turkey .In Turkish.  Wish. For:

2015  serenity and a  for me to NOT let slip through all my urges , perhaps, to fwuck the fwuckers in a new music field, ploughing the Irish championships’ musical forms,  highest ploughed excellence in my CELLO CONCERTO ( March 13.  2015.  Mighty orchestra, my  N S O / with mighty Martin Johnson / and mighty Kenneth Montgomery , our mighty conductor )    .

But then a steady, magical  composing for 13 strings in New York City ( NorthSoundOrchestra – mighty Max Lifchitz ) for my  ” QUASI UNA STORIA ”  for String Orchestra :  February 15 2015. In mighty Manhatten .

Sunday afternoon at 15.00  of a cold February  15.  Music history born ? Yes ,cwertainly; Irish music history born.