Frank Corcoran

irish composer

ROBERT DARROLL, OH HE IS DEAD THEN ?

     Robet Darroll died last May in Berlin.

In those terrible ( for me ) nineties in Hamburg I´d loved Robert´s KOREAN TRILOGY. (-  His MOE´S FIELD was just beginning to break new, revolutionary ground ), their thousands of  individual, hand-painted Darroll pictures singly filmed, sequenced, super-imposed, kineticized, Robert´s delightful play of and with
these images;  a dot becomes a line, an angle, a fish, a budding flower, a leaping river, an ocean, his moving art as poetical in the very best sense, as his Gestalt / narrating logic directed his flow and each little film became a more that minr masterpiece, a hymn to Horace´s delight in play and form with those mutating images.
With Robert´s departure from Hamburg for Tokyo in 2001 something very precious hurt.
His early death in May brought no closure, no peace except the Unanswered Question.
I plod on. Certainly, to search is to find form, musical form too.
As in Robert Darroll´s art, also a composer can transmute, solder, forge, fuse motivs, ideas, rhythms, colours, musical masses and lines ; his play and delight and self-delight, his the creator´s freedom. No bad thing, Robert Darroll, your KOREAN TRILOGY ( and much later, your other praised and prized works )  will live on .
Back to business, Horace. Kinetic excellence, Frank. Tonally moving forms, Hanslick.
It is a fish. Is it ?

Posted under: Humble Hamburg Musings

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