To the EDITOR / Irish Times . 11.11.2014
Dear Editor,
I weep for the Irish Times and the Royal Irish Academy’s post-colonialist ” panel of experts ” and their pale Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks.
post-colonialist ignorance of contemporary Irish art-music . Over twenty years ago now the Irish Times portraited me as an Irish composer abroad who had no chance of being understood at home ( – it meant being understood by our Irish intellectuals, leaders, arts administrators and panels of ” experts” ) as an Irish artist working in sound , tone, silence; seeing an Irish symphony, sonata, chorus, opera, concerto, as on an exact par with an Irish book, painting, sculpture, play, poem, building. Certainly I weep.
For your “experts” with their 100 Irish Artworks nothing has changed . An Irish ” cumad’oir ceoil” has no place in their 100 post-colonial artworks. – Yet how could she ? In 1981 my “SYMPHONIES OF SYMPHONIES OF WIND” was premiered in Mozart’s Vienna with the O.R.F.S..O under Lothar Zagrosek. Silence at home. ( Why ? Well, the Irish
“post- colonial” canon of what are and are not Irish arts doesn’t perceive Irish composed music as a part of Irish intellectual tradition. ) My ” JOYCEPEAK MUSIK ” won the German Studio Akustische Prize in 1996. – Yawn at home.. Yes. Post-colonial. My electro-acoustic “SWEENEY’S VISION ” won the 1999 Bourges Festival Premier Prix. West German Radio commissioned my ” QUASI UNA MISSA” which then won the 2002 Swedish EMS Prize.
A post-colonial narration of Ireland and Irish musical composition indeed ? Last year my choral “EIGHT HAIKUS” won the International Federation for Choral Music First Prize Outright . ( Here I am not blowing my trumpet but my musical nails )
Your revered panel’s post-colonial blinkers are blind to composed music on the Irish island . Abroad there is a healthy
recognition of four generations of Irish composers . I weep now for your woeful bias, the disgrace of your lazy, unexamined definition of Irish arts.
Yours etc.
Frank Corcoran , Irish Composer, Member of Aosdana.