Frank Corcoran

Dear Frank Corcoran,
We will broadcast Quasi una Fuga on monday the 25th of April at 23:00 hours.
kind regards. We will repeat it on May 5th 18:00 hours and on May 15th.
again at 23:00 hours.
Dutch Radio CONCERTZENDER

What then is truth ? In musical form, the shaped shape ?
The crafted micro-details and / or the Big Wow-Thing ? ( eg.
Lutoslawsky´s in 1968 not yet fully completed Second Symphony , the a little later exquisitely sculpted Preparation / Full Slam dramatic plan ? )

The first of two concerts of new Irish music for violin and piano brought the leading duo in the field, Darragh Morgan and Mary Dullea, to King’s Place for a selection of works from the more experimental and modernist fringes.
Apart from Gerald Barry’s 1998 the works were mostly short, and they made a varying impression. Frank Corcoran again convinced me that he is a composer who deserves to be better known in this country. Something about his brambly music reminds me of Maderna – not so much in its style, but in its absolute assurance in teasing lyrical forms from its knotty exterior. Quasi una preludio was precisely poised and, even with the introduction of a sean-nós melody at the end, never watered down its acid bite.

Read more here.

Posted in Concerts, Reviews

Tagged Darragh Morgan, Frank Corcoran, Gerald Barry, Mary Dullea, Musical Pointers
New Irish music at King’s Place
Posted on 7 October 2009 by Tim Rutherford-Johnson|

No corresponding paeans for eg. the ” City Of Music” idea, for Irish
composed music, for Irish contemporary composers, for artists in the sounding gardens of the Lord writing this and composed that and explored symphonic discourses and sung constructions and motivic sonatas and motivated string quintets or eight bar melodies, light as the Irish air we breathe and fly in, over, through . No City of Music , or even Musics. Funny, that. Behind the cant we can´t. Understand an Irish cumadóir at the cutting edge of sculpting sound and shaping time eternal and dying. No. We can´t understand an Irish composercomposing. ( Poets and would-be writers, pestering prosy pensters don´t, they can´t ). Why is that ? Why is that funny ? City of Lit, sound today what paeans ? Celebrate?

Frank Corcoran´s new ” SONGS OF TERROR AND LOVE” for Bass and “Pierrot Ensemble” was part of Culture Ireland´s
“Imagining Ireland” 2011 Mega-Show on March 14 in New York, Manhattan. Max Lifchitz conducted the North South Consonance Ensemble splendidly. David Salsbery Fry was a highly musical, dramatic, plastic soloist in my
Jacopone Da Todi texts – Umbran and English ( by Frank Corcoran ). At Christ and St. Stephen´s Church in 69th. Street West this world-premiere unwound like a great “sonorous column” , as the Italians poetically put it. Cello, viola and violin, piano, flutes and clarinets surrounded , supported, gave their musical commentary to the singer´s mini-drama of jacopone locked against ” O Papa Bonifazio!” Strong stuff, high art.
Next day the Gregg Smith Singers did a Composer´s Reading / Recording of my new choral score, ” EIGHT HAIKUS BY FRANK CORCORAN” , washing and fluting and whispering and chording the lines of my magical syllables and consonants. eg. in ( I like this one especially ! ) my
Haiku Nr. 4:
” Deep purple twilight / / In the bay lie three islands / /
Asleep like children. ”
Cori spezzati, velvety chording, well, the sung synaesthesia was a new New York special, spanning the choral distance, Borrisokane takes notes, between Gabrieli and Ligeti. And The Word was made Choir.

WHO´S WHO IN IRELAND ( 2006 ) : ” Frank Corcoran”

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IRELAND ( 2003 ). ( Ed. Brian lalor. Yale University Press ) : ” Frank Corcoran “

IMMA presents “In Conversation 3: The Composers”

March 2, 2011 by ditmdlibrary

On Sunday, 6th March Bernard Clarke from RTE Lyric fm will steer an open discussion between Irish composers Gerald Barry and Donnacha Dennehy on developments of music in Ireland in the 20th century. This event will take place in the IMMA lecture room in Kilmainham Jail. It is running in conjunction with the Moderns exhibition which featured work by Sean O’Riada, Derek Ball, Brian Boydell, Gerald Barry, Frank Corcoran, Raymond Deane and Seoirse Bodley.

” Not to be modest ( for a composer ) is ridiculous. ”

” Creative artists live in an ideal world, several hours a day…. The world in which we live, the “real” world, doesn´t really need us. ”

” I may have suffered in Poland but yet my music is independent, safe, isolated from that. We composers are messengers from an ideal world. “

The stars separate.

Romeo and Juliet

Also. Stop sobbing !

As found in the Oxford Music Online encyclopedia (only accessible through

universities):

Corcoran has developed a distinct and complex language of aleatory

macro-counterpoint in which sound layers are superimposed polyphonically but

retain independence through distinctive polymetric, agogic and dynamic

indications. This technique is evident from the early Piano Trio (1978) to Ice

Etchings no.1 and Mad Sweeney (both 1996). His many cultural interests are

reflected in the texts of his vocal works; the opera Gilgamesh (1990), for

example, is based on a Sumerian epic. The Irische Mikrokosmoi for piano (1993)

are based on traditional Irish melodies and rhythms.