Frank Corcoran

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.

Yes, art can certainly be defined. but watch the context, the cultural and historical period. Is it art or arts ? Which art ?
See also Horace, the Roman poet, his ” sheen and seen! ” .
See also the crafts . etc. Clear the decks.
Or are we attempting a definition now and here? In this 21 st. c. ?
Then where exactly we do the defining is also important. eg. Take Ireland and contemporary , composed music. Alas, I do insist that in Ireland still today there is hardly a concept, any attempted definition, a way of defining Irish musical works – composed by real Irish composers – as art, indeed as Irish art and on a level with eg. Irish poetry, film, painting etc. ( Sure I was going on about this decades ago )
So what are the causes of this curious prejudice, this Irish exclusion of Irish composed music from Irish arts, I wonder ? Dogma ? Lazy thinking? Could it be the general lack of experiencing New Irish Music played, sung, sounding , is that it ? Mull this over.
There have in the past been many definitions of art, of musical composition. It´s also worth reflecting on some of the things we still today may define composing Irish music as: it is ” sicut fumus” , like smoke, ethereal. It is a temporal art, indeed THE time-art par excellence. Time-bending, stretching, sculpting, stitching, overlapping, deluding, defying, conquering. ( See Gabriel Rosenstock´s ” Buailim bob ar bhás! ” ) Composing is mythic hope, it´s utopian, fighting the good fight. If “cinis aequat omnia”, still a Frank Corcoran composition will yell and shout and erect its own resistance to John Montague´s ” Sea of history / Upon which we all turn / Turn and thrash / And disappear… ” Music keens, protests, praises a fightin´ transcendence which potentially lives beyond the grave.
Certainly, music can be defined. Art can be defined. Irish contemporary music fights its corner , defining Ireland, Irish art, Irish artists.

FRANK CORCORAN

Water in my jar
Becomes January ice
Snap! Thud! The jar breaks !

In the cold New Year
The water jug froze so thick
That it exploded

Icicles hang from
My cold January jug
It´s now cracked across

He´ll earn more than a few lines from my composer´s wrist.ing Watch out this magic Lutoslawsky Week Writhing . Lutoslawsky did it. – Waited. ” Heard” his ” Polish ” composer´s orchestral rhythms, imagined / frozen instrumental snatches and commentaries and arguments and dialogues etc. , the world´s musical sighs, great preparations for great orchestral tuttis ( Well, yes, the Second Symphony smacks the world´s gob; and that Third is supreme. His, at his mortal , cancer – end
Fourth Symphony is quite new. – Is it born again! ? Certainly ! Heard anew. )

He was, Lutoslawsky . He reinvented the wheel. Of melody and of harmony and, above all , of course , with his orchestral rhythm. His rhythms, ” aleatoric ” .
A lovely man, fear an-uasal, I trembled and yet shook his hand at that mythic 1977 Warszawska Jesien. Molaim!
My Irish composer´s body still gets a depth-charge from his Second Symphony ( – It´s basically a fortissimo Prepare – Charge ! ! ! , I was just back from Boris Blacher in West Berlin and it was the old RTE Studios in Henry Street… , I don´t any more know, ” LIVRES ” , its outrageous form, is even stronger, even more anti – Deutsch , more ” anti-Brahms ” ( – he whom I love … See my Feb. 9. 2013 big NDR Klassik ” FRANK CORCORAN´S great radiophonic analysis of Brahms 2. plus , then, Frank Corcoran´s
2012 Violin Concerto , Irish N S O / Alan Smale , conducted by Christopher Warren-Green ) . Why? e.g. – Many times have I programmed Lutoslawsky´s frozen-sad / mourn – caoine MUSIQUE FUNEBRE ( – only his severe strings, grave canons as great as Stravinsky´s ) with my Corcoran orchestral caoines. The beginning of his THIRD SYMPHONY and that opening ( and his WOW ! ) close of his FOURTH SYMPHONY give me back now all my hope, my Irish composer´s
strength. MY hope: In symphonic form. In the great Polish composer´s colour-imagination. Molaim Lutoslawsky. Caoinim Lutoslawsky ! Weep !

HAIKUS IN FROZEN HAMBURG
( After Basho and Gabriel Rosenstock )

Water in my jar
Becomes January ice
Snap! Thud! The jar breaks !

In that cold New Year
The water jug just froze thick
Then it exploded

Icicles hang from
My cold January jug
It´s just cracked across

Yes, the clichees are true, awfully so : – eg. about the Limes, ” I Romani never swam in the Elbe ” etc.
In 2013 I must – I will, in this ( too, too ) cozy corner explore : Hamburg And Music / Why Lutoslawski´s 100 th. Birthday Is As Swill To Swine …
An ecological necessity.
No Hamburger has compositional ” passion”, musical curiosity. Dead from the waist down. ( – Just before publishing this , I´ve e-mailed Johannes Brahms from Altona ! )
The usual ” Pepper-sack” Argument is trotted out – it suffices not.

e.g.
Who has ever proved that the Genom Hanseaticum is a priori anti-music ?
Why ( if it does happen to be so ) ?

I´ll take Hamburg , the 1770 s, pre-Napoleon, their Churches´ Leaders´ Musical Shenannigans ?
Etc. etc., then we´ll have to take Hamburg before / within/ after its Nazi Tollabawns ? And yet . N.B.

This is relevant to my initial question: why is your Hamburg lost to New Music ?
Hmmm. Must mull. Many variables.
The Roots Of Intellectual Laziness, such comic themes. Perennially fresh.

N D R Kultur 09.02.2013
PRISMA MUSIK : 22.05 – 24.00

Frank Corcoran: VIOLINKONZERT

Alan Smale / RTE National Symphony Orchestra
Leitung: Christopher Warren – Green ( ca. 21´. )

For bright – cold / searing -hot summer heat / 2013, and its autumnal decline-curve and its, my wintry discontent, yes, a metaphor for a composer´s
WHAT ? Therefore I´ll :
1. Seek out the multipliers ( – players , situations, carpe the chance, the conductor ! ) swiftly, a composer´s silence.
2. Supposing now tthat in 2013 here are not any – what then ?

3. Well then, in this slowly emerging, birthing New Year 2013, supposing I do not confuse , NEVER conflate my composing with
my planning of performances, of my composer´s image, such hype.

4. Remain nimble, I mean nimble fingers and nimble tonal considerations eg. about the high hat or how many piccolos in the first movement ?

5. Bann all blues, those blue notes , but especially those biochemically produced.

6. Don´t forget The Larger Picture. Ever.

7. If possible, laugh. If ( – temporarily, we hope for 2013 ) not possible, then at least whicker, snicker, try the wry grin. ( – Corcoran Corollary: It can be bitter, the composer´s slog in the delightful world of 2013 ? Are you insane, Frank Corcoran !?

8. Remember our, my lonely heroes ( – yes, my heroes in poverty, with syphilis, suffering no recognition, poor, bleeding composers receiving God´s whacks and cattle-prods , eg. death of a child , groin-kicks breath-taking, break your coccyx, your spine, your very 2013 HOPE ! ! ) – eg. of the ilk of:
– Webern at the end, – young syphilis-postuled Schubert, – old shaky tremolo-whisky hand Sibelius, such greats, such giants. There are more.
Coraggio ! Hauld on ! Halt fest! Bí Cúramach !
I give you 2013.

9. From such giants my 2013 shall learn, will rise, should all-encompass, has to blow all paeans , the body electric, the full orchestral tutti, all-encompassing, Si !, GIGANTIC AND GARGANTUAN – SOUNDING Ath-Bhliain = NEW YEAR 2013. ( ? resounding success ! – RESOUND ! )

10. Forget never great Lutoslawsky´s ( quasi last ? ) interview with that canny Canadian radio :
” Is it not incredibly wonderful that we composers daily can enter and leave and enter once again our composer´s alternative universe of sounding visions and aspirations and soul´s dreams infinite ? ”

JANUARY HAIKU

A swan´s white plumage
Lost in the eternal snow.
How now it´s swan-song ?
( Próinsias Mac an Bhais ´O )

” There´ll be no whitewash in the White House!”
( Richard Nixon )