Frank Corcoran

irish composer

WHY AM I , YES , EXCITED ?

The Hound of Culann / No mean daw with a sliotar / Also died of love

To Ulster travel
Describe how Ferdia fell
Kissed , killed by his friend

March 12 . 2013 New York Premiere of my ” VARIATIONS ON MYSELF” ( North South Consonance Chamber Orchestra ) draws near. Five wind with my macro-counterpoint ; five strings grid the temporal flow. Exciting, this magical birth ? Whew !

STEALTH , THIS BRITTLE FEBRUARY NIGHT

Be still, bí cúramach, my composing soul.
Masks and clever posturings tonight removed, the naked fact is:
Vast sonic sludge filthsglobally. Globally it cheapens my listening, my normal human thrust towards understanding any music – how I might possibly make sense of sixteen bars? – of thirty two ” symphonic ” phrasings and their answerings and , well, my BUILDING.

HOW DEFINE ” HEROIC COURAGE ” ?

It´s up to me.
( To compose or not to yell or condemn or act the silent coward and imitate myself and reap cheap applause, harvest, – I know EXACTLY what I´m logging about ? ) .
I was greatly comforted by recent celebrations of Lutoslawsky´s 100 th.
Of moral courage ( – in the DARKEST hour of Europe, also of European music ! ) , and thus his self-forged technique to fix / write SUCH orchestral wash and swirl and formal, sonic victories. The ” new” made , conceived, forged new by Lutoslawsky. ( In the middle of horrible , horrible loss, of Satan´s Last Temptation ? )
He did it.

ICICLES HANG BY THE WALL

I have now added you as a new composer to my Classical Composers
Database: http://www.classical-composers.org/comp/corcoran

I would be grateful if you could also add a link from your website to
my Classical Composers Database (http://www.classical-composers.org/).

PRE DUBLIN, GALWAY AND NEW YORK

Frank Corcoran in CRANE-BAG . June 1984 .

Irish music is being written by Irish composers on this island. It has the same right to attention as the other irish arts… Irish composers must work ( Groan ! Groan! ) for more performances, a major pedagogic effort directed at creating an audience and helping it to come with them down the long road since 1911. We can reverse the massive bias against the art of music. Against, really, all music. What I am really advocating is the art of listening.

TWO IMPORTANT MILE-STONES – TEN COMPOSING YEARS APART

1990 Frank Corcoran Artist Fellow ( Composition ) at the
Virginia Artists´ Colony.
( The big black snake´s daily crawl from his tree-house ao the Centre´s kitchen
back-door. The death by suspicious drowning of Joe´s black brother )

2000 Frank Corcoran Artistic Director of the SLIGO MUSIC FESTIVAL
( In the William Butler Yeats town of Sligo, Sligeach, by Ireland´s North West
Atlantic Ocean – powerful, cruel pull and ebb and massive tides and waves,
mighty energy )
For Corcoran performances at this SLIGO FESTIVAL , see WORKS :

FEBRUARY GUFF AND AWE

Look, we´ll take today poor Descartes´ much maligned COGITO. Now we´ll change its verb into the passive voice – from ” Cogito ergo sum” we´ll have

“Cogitor ergo sum ” = ” I exist because I am thought” or ” The only reason why I exist is that I am an object of somebody´s thinking! ” , – a not undodgy sentence, sadly not unknown in psychiatric institutions. Now suppose I substitute “Audio” ( ” I hear” ) in a similar sentence – ” Audio ergo sum” ( ” I am heard therefore I exist” ) and I then change it into its passive voice, thus getting: ” Audior ergo sum ” ( ” I am heard therefore I exist” ) . If the subject meant here is the musical work, then I´ll get an equally dodgy sentence : ” Audior ergo sum” = ” I, a piece of musical composition , am heard, therefore I exist” . Or: ” The reason why I exist is because i am being heard ( played, observed, listened to, recorded, performed orchestrally, applauded, booed off the stage and out the door , etc. etc. ” ) . This dodgy, toxic assumption is too often behind today´s composer, his reception, her perception and self-perception. ” Oh, well, because I am performed, I am! ” This has several corollaries, all equally poison: ” I am bloody good because I am ( being ) performed!” or , ahem : ” This work is no good because it´s not being performed… ” But this way lies madness. Beware The Musical COGITO. In all its forms.

NIGHT GUFF IS BEST

Apparently there´s ” nothing up there “. Our dirty – melon, fourth quarter moon ( last October Harvest 2012 ) appeared to me at my peperino stone table – mostly magical , those nights – indifferent. That same moon was insisting.There´s definitely NOBODY up there who´ll wipe my tears, my freshly inked tones, who´ll weep for all my ´O Corcoráins and Ní Cathasaighs, my legion of dead shrouds, unloved, unwept, un bemoaned.
Apparently. That cosmos is VERY indifferent. ( – no e-mails back from We Know Who ! ) – and yet, what would She , how should She ? ” I´ll now and here take into My Infinite Goddess´s Lap all your woes, whimpers, whinges. That and the ” why you were born” question , I´ll not give you a goddess´s short change but a Cosmic Great Hug. ” ” Indifferent my moon, cosmos, night-sky. Sappho dead, too.