To: the Editor,
IRISH TIMES Nov. \6 2014
Dear Editor,
I really could weep for the Irish Times and the Royal Irish Academy’s post-colonialist ” panel of experts ” and their pale Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks. ”
M’or Mo N’aire ” indeed for your experts’ expert ignorance of contemporary Irish art-music . Over twenty years ago now the Irish Times portraited me as an
Irish composer abroad
with not a chance of being understood at home as, well, an Irish artist working in sound , tone, silence( in a situation where an Irish symphony, sonata, chorus, opera, concerto is accepted as on a pa rwith an Irish book, painting, sculpture, play, poem, building. )…..
For your experts with their 100 Irish Artworks nothing seems to have changed . An Irish ” cumad’oir ceoil” has no place in their 100 post-colonial artworks. –
In 1981 my “SYMPHONIES OF SYMPHONIES OF WIND” was premiered in Vienna with the ORFSO under Lothar Zagrosek. Silence at home. ( Why ? Because the Irish “post- colonial” canon of what are and are not Irish arts has no perception at all of Irish composers and Irish composed music as part of the Irish intellectual tradition. ). My ” JOYCEPEAK MUSIK ” won the German Studio Akustische Prize in 1996. Yawns at home.. My “SWEENEY’S VISION
” won the 1999 French Bourges Festival Premier Prix. West German Radio commissioned ” QUASI UNA MISSA” which won the 2002 Swedish EMS
Prize. A post-colonial narration of Ireland and Irish musical composition indeed ? What can not be just can not be, it seems. Last year my choral “EIGHT HAIKUS” won the International Federation forChoral Music First Prize Outright . Here I am not blowing my own trumpet . What about the distinguished work of distinguished Irish composers, younger and older ?
Your panel’s Modern Ireland In 100 Artworks shows post-colonial blinkers; it is blind to composed music on the Irish island . This is a woeful bias, a disgracefully lazy, unexamined definition of the Irish arts.
Yours etc.
Frank Corcoran , Irish Composer, Member of Aosdana.