Frank Corcoran

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 :

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.

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.

Bianco io

Sotto la luce bianca

Baccio la notte

CORRECTION :

The first of three Concertzender broadcasts of
Frank Corcoran´s VIOLIN CONCERTO is on:

Friday 1. February 2013

Dutch Radio Concertzender on February 8 and
10 and 12 . 2013. – three broadcasts
Frank Corcoran VIOLIN CONCERTO
( N.S.O. Dublin, Conductor Christopher Warren-Green, Soloist Alan Smale ) of Nov. 2. 2012

The dead composer
Cold, he hears a choir murder
His lovely phrases.

Don´t piss on the graves!
I entered the choir´s warm church
Fluffy snow falling

Leaping and sliding
The choir´s lines like woven threads
Outside it´s icy

In 1965 Witold Lutoslawsky wrote down the following passage which summarised his approach to the then avant-garde:

‘What is my attitude toward the avant-garde? First of all, I have a fellow-feeling for it. However, in spite of the basic role the avant-garde plays in the development of every art, I also see something sad about it. There is always a tinge of resignation in the stance of an avant-gardist, since it consists of expecting elements that are of no real importance in themselves to perform the function of a finished work of art. ”

Yes, woven words. Grave words.

View as single page

What desperate composer in these nights of snow and ice wouldn´t sell her grannie for a performance ? ( – ” My kingdom for an orchestral performance, a festival appearance, a two weeks´ tour with wild adulation ” kind-of-thing – )
Consider, my icy soul: LESSON ONE – ” My music isn´t bad, only badly played ” ( approximately Schoenberg ) . LESSON TWO – Baking and selling the cake are two distinct skills to be kept permanently separate. Otherwise…
LESSON THREE – consider the greats, sleeping in their snowed-over tumuli; consider the desperate desperation of a Hugo Wolf, an Anton Webern, a Berndt Alois Zimmermann or a Bela Bartók in New York City Hospital . There are others. LESSON FOUR – getting that commission guarantees nothing.
When will this snow stop ?

I reel. I rawl.
Lech Majewski´s film: ” THE MILL AND THE CROSS” , visually gorgeous, enormous, newest technology and 3D an´all and this extraordinary Kattowice painter/ poet/ film maker/ composer ( YES ! Yes.- Blessed are the self-styled…. ) extraordinary; eccentric is not the word . Let Majewski speak.
” Transporting the painting ( i.e. Peter Breughel The Elder´s 1564 Nicolas Jonghelinck´s painted commission, ” Crucifixion”, into such a different medium, however, took patience: The result is a mix of old-fashioned craftsmanship and the latest in digital film-making technology. Costumes were hand-sewn by Polish seamstresses and dyed with tints made from boiled onions, beetroots and apples, as they would have been in Bruegel’s day; the “right” color black was achieved by burning a candle against a pane of glass, rather than relying on computers to recreate the exact hue. ”
Majewski himself had to take up Bruegel’s brush and complete a partially-visible tree in the top-left corner of the painting to extend the field of vision for the camera to pan across.
– So: is Majewski´s “DIE MÜHLE UND DAS KREUZ” , then, close to Adorno´s “Kitsch ? Yes ! Too close ?
Yes! it is too close . Hmmm. Pity. – Behind its gorgeous ( Polish, ” Catholic” ) camera´s masterfull ecstasy , taking its slow, visual pleasure in torture, in peasants´ over-lovely ( – operatic ? perhaps even Visconti? )
costumes , crimson Spanish Inquisition murderers´ horses, Majewski´s Catholic cameras ( plural , polyphonic, many layers ) , I am afraid, wallow ( – is he aware of this ? – surely not? ) in – a great sin, an aesthetic sin, Polish Jesuits would nod – TAKING VISUAL PLEASURE, my son ( ” How many times! ? ” ) in ” violent sacrifice ” theology, in “Electric Chair Theology” , in Sacred Sadism Theology .
Behind his ( laudable ) silences and lush pannings and delightfully, deliberately slow tempi is an attitude towards holy pornography ( – Miles better , I grant you , than the truly awful Mel Gibson ) which thus sadly betrays his great filmic mastery. Unholy. Verily. That aesthetic of his message nukes thus his seen, felt, dreamed, filmic massage of me, the composing viewer. Pity. Beware Kitsch in all its ( lush, even lovely ) meretricious forms. Even in music. Especially in music.