Well, it is. How natural a thing to hop on the waggon of a great composer one has however fleetingly known. Take ” Remembering Ligeti ” as this pan – European phenomenon rather than a genuine memorial to a giant of contemporary ( now , alas, no longer ! ) music. I remember the tea-filter he gave me as I came to Hamburg in 1983 , as he said Hamburg water was very poor tea-water. He was right. I remember the recording-copy he made himself for me of the then still freshly performed opera , ” Le Grand Macabre” , how he was still dissatisfied with certain places in the writing. Even after several revisions and cuts. Opened my ears ( – though I didn´t agree ).
I remember in ” The Sound Of Exile ” ( published in RTE´s THE QUIET CORNER , 2004 New Ireland Press, ed. Eoin Brady ).
I also remember – and am remembered, re-painted, interviewed – in Lutz Lesle´s ” Seelenlandschaft einer Insel ” ( Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 4 of July 2002 ).
I remember as well ” Frank Corcoran – Substanz für die Zukunft” with Hans Dieter Grünefeld
( Music Manual, Vienna, of Spring 2002 ) .
I try to remember myself , then, in ” It´s A Cold Wind Blows On An Irish Composer ” ( Kunst/Musik 4, Cologne, Spring 2005 )
Dokumenta 2008 in Kassel remembers to slap filmed bits of my thoughts on aesthetics and the
tea-filter on its 2008 filmed interview. I´ll dig out that web.
Magyar Rádió, Budapest, remembers to present my ” Ireland And Hungary” in English and Hungarian at its May 2006 Hommage à Bartók with the premiere of my then new ” Quasi Un Basso”.
I remember my J.M.I. essays , the seminal ” Do Dolmens Lament? ” ( Nov. 2001 ) , ” My Music Is A Four-Letter Word” ( March 2001 ) and especially ” Sligo New Music Festival 2000″ ( November 2000 ). – Has any Irish musicologist, music-theorist, music-pope, music-philosopher ever addressed my thesis ? – Remember ? The ” Irish Mikrokosmoi” were ” Scenes From My Receding Past”, remember ? They remember. Tones remember , too; also tonal masses , tonal wash, tone-colour, tonal lines and spaces and textures and cells and the geniality of a Ligeti idea or a Lutoslawsky rhythmic skein.