Frank Corcoran

QUASI UN PRELUDIO for Solo Violin Frank Corcoran

I seem to divide my time nowdays between Hamburg , Dublin an Italy. I am in love with Viterbo of the Popes in Northern Lazio.
In the great heat of my sun-dappled garden last year I finished” 4 Orchestral Songs” ( Premiere N.S.O. Dublin 2010 ) , ” 9 Pratoleva Pearls ” for Solo Piano and “Quasi Un Preludio” fo Solo Piano. A good harvest.
The “Quasi” of the title positions this little miniature solo among my earlie “Quasi” series of the late nineties ( after I´d finished the ” Mad Sweeney” series ) , eg. “Quasi Un Canto” for Large Orchestra”, ” Quasi Un Pizzicato” for Wireworks Ensemble, Hamburg , the electro-acoustic “Quasi Una Missa” for West German Radio ( it won the Swedish EMS Prize in 2002 ) , “Quasi Un Concerto” for the Cantus Ensemble Zagreb, “Quasi Una Fuga” ( commissoned by the Irish Chamber Orchestra who premiered it in Limerick Cathedral as part of the 2007 Shannon Festival ) etc. , culminating in the recent Octet, “Quasi Una Sarabanda” for the Swiss Ensemle, “Antipodes” , premiered in Berne, Basel and Zürich in June 2009.
– So is this ” Quasi Un Preludio” for violin solo a prelude or a pearl from Pratoleva ? – less a Webernian miniature, more a compressed argument for the total stringiness of the soaring violin solo .
A chromatic argument , yes. Very world- and very Irish music, as this hardly two minutes of musical argument mutates into that
passionate Connamara sean-nós caoine of the Irish Famine , ” Sail ´Og Rua”.

FRANK CORCORAN : born 1944 in Tipperary, Ireland. Studied ancient languages, philosophy, theology , music in Dublin, Rome and Berlin ( composition with Boris Blacher ) .
1980 Composer Fellowship with the Berlin Artists´Programme. Since 1983 Professor in Hamburg. Many distinctions and commissions. 1989 – 90 Fulbright Professor in the U.S.A. and Guest Professor at Princeton, Harvard, Indiana, New York, CalArts, etc.
Works performed and broadcast in Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia. Member of Aosdana, the Irish Academy of the Arts.
Recent works include: Clarinet Concerto ( commission 2009 ) Violin Concerto ( 2010 ), 4 Orchestral Lieder ( National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland 2010 ) , Quasi Una Sarabanda ( Berne 2008 ), Quasi Una Fuga for String Orchestra ( 2007 ), Quasi Un Concerto ( Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra 2005 ) , Quasi Un Caoine ( N.S.O.2005 ), ” Mad Sweeney ” for Large Ensemble and Speaker ( Boston Musica Viva 2005 ) , electro-acoustic ” Tradurre – Tradire ” ( Deutschland Radio Berlin 2004 ) “Sweeney´s Vision” ( commissioned by W.D.R. 1997; Bourges Festival 1999 Premier Prix ) etc.

QUASI UNA SARABANDA Frank Corcoran

In the mid-nineties I wrote “Mad Sweeney” for Speaker and Chamber Orchestra ( to a text by the Irish Nobel Prize-winner for Literature, Seamus Heaney ) .
This sparked off the series of ” Mad Sweeney” works , including the electronic ” Sweeney´s Vision” ( a W.D.R. commission which won the 1999 Bourges Festival Premier Prix ) , came my “Quasi” works for various forces, including “Quasi Un Canto” ( Zagreb Philharmonic 2005 ), “Quasi Un Caoine ( N.S.O. 2005 ) , “Quasi Una Fuga” for 18 Strings ( Irish Chamber Orchestra 2007 ) , the electro-acoustic “Quasi Una Missa” ( W.D.R. commission; it won the 2002 Swedish E.M.S. Prize ) , ” Quasi Un Concerto” ( Cantus Ensemble 2006 ) etc.
Last year I composed “Quasi Una Sarabanda” for the Swiss Ensemble “Antipodes”. It is the most recent of my “Quasi” works. It is a sarabande, well,quasi a sarabande . I , as an Irish and ” world – composer” , am no innocent . I know too much of what art-music has been composed, at least in our European history.
Mine is a one-movement argument for ( the classical ) octet. It is a hommage to that great and sad dance – form since ( at least ) the sixteenth c. when melancoly Spanish King
Phillip shut himself up in his depressive Escorial Palace. How much great art-music ( and Irish classical Slow Airs of the ” sean nós” tradition … ) used the rhythmic scaffolding of this halting, stumbling slow three-in-the-bar ? Horn, bassoon and clarinet stumble and sway and sing and scream with the five strings.
Does my stark argument lead inexorably to the viola and violin keening in the final moments of my eleven magical minutes ? Premiere with the Octet of the “Antipodes” Ensemble this June 19 – 21 in Berne, Geneva and Basle. First recording by Radio DRS in Berne.

SOME PRATOLEVA HAIKUS :

I saw her cold eyes
I heard great goose-wings beating
Her ugly, webbed feet

Crow is scratching snow
Beak and claw and craw, black, white
Bird-eye murderous

New Year´s Day glitters
Its firt daw-glint is calving
A hoe in the cold shed

The centre, drowned,
Cannot hold, the wild geese know,
Their swirring wings know

Yes, I did enjoy greatly writing those five little texts for RTÉ´s “The Quiet Corner” plus
– trí Gaeilge- a mini-portrait of Corcoran´s Saint Patrick for Lá Le Pá¡draig 2009, all broadcast in this week of March 16 -10.
Why? Because the pen compels the typist to shape and schnitt and cut and form and weigh her words . To compose. See? I don’t have to be synaesthetic, merely symmetrical or anti- or sympathetic to this idea. Words instead of tones. Gentle wordiness in place of tonality.
See?

A LATE , LOVING LETTER TO THE IRISH SOCIETY OF SUICIDOLOGY

Well, are there some amongst us who cannot now draw these e-threads together into a Benozzo Gozzoli golden cloth – of – email ?
Yes, we had male parthenogenesis ( rare enough, it must be admitted in Queen´s County ) ; then we stitched in father´s father´s similar auto-erotic achievements. Go easy on the next cloth-of-gold stitch. ( The Great Scream, my unworthy and washed two typing fingers feel it here, is being propelled not down but up the chimney-vortex. Keep it clean, young filigrain stitchers; watch and wash your tongues, no patchwork, please. Enter composed film-music by The Young Chief Cassidy ( – I said keep it clean, will you ! ) Himself.
No, Benozzo Gozzoli´s cloth-of-gold will not of itself remake Sainted Ben´s painted gold archbishop´s mistake in a matter of humble causality, – eg. who caused the screamer´s scream ? Who did, as a matter of proven fact, eat my Great Aunt Bridget´s roasted pony ? Had it been roasted for her only ? Golden error happens.
Weave into our golden passacaglia eleven tones: Hypothumotic stitchers, prove it; prove we are all ready. Finis; even great stitching dies. Ladies, come, all, to the potty ! Then, I remember it very well, we stitched in nothing. God is no thing. Capitals is better. Squirt the left tit again!
No. Our little embroidery job isnt´t quite finished. Weave in the one big auntie, a damned good concertina-player; – actually, her will has had it, she was unravelled smartly, unfairly ( she claimed she was very weak ) , out of the Big Design. Last story: ( the good old first person singularis, jugularis ) we´ll stitch in my golden cousin, cloth-of-gold . Stitch in the ” nea” between her microtonal accordeon tones . Stitch in her “HOW NOW! ? !” womb-cancer, as you´re at it.

Short is our needle, our tea-break, your e-painting patience, Bennie Gozzoli. . Certainly, I googled you – it was for my dead, concertina-playing cousin – we will carry in couchant our Painter Benozzo Gozzoli´s Last Will And Testament ( ” O filii et filiae ; now the cancer raceth up my Renaissance painterly-stiff shoulder ” ) .
” I , Benozzo Gozzoli, courted painter of, chiefly, angels´wings, all sizes and specifications are to get an Umbran welcome, I do bequeath to this, still my (?) world all my coloured swirls, my slashes and oil wisps and half-finished Monte Falco angelic wings and rainbows and ye´ll have great fun with. Try to cap that. ”

O filii. Now they race through his now forever stiff painter´s shoulder: yes, he had painted that golden archbishop and my killing, cancerous cousin´s concertina with the three final chords which finished off weak composer, Strauss, Richard, and his Four Last Songs. Listen: it´s C Minor, B Flat, E Flat. There now. Easy now . Lay down dat brush.

To be honest, I see it differently.
I spent my 1993 Black Hole Year writing the ” Irische Mikrokosmoi” for solo piano. Fair enough. I had to focus the mind between insanity and , well, insanity. After all that which had run its unquiet course, I had only two hands – the right was inked; the left hand attempted to ape the bass-buttons ( – well, not exactly ) of the Borrisokane 1950- ies Céilí Band I aped.
I wanted to distill first twelve, then fifty Irish slow airs. Rape them.

May 5, 6 and 7 next : David Stromberg will perform Frank Corcoran´s ” ICE ETCHINGS” for Solo Cello ( – commissioned by Rome Festival 1995, Madeleine Shapiro, cello ) at the Hamburg Klangcontainer, Hamburg .

2009 is a Joseph Haydn Anniversary Year so I have produced for North German Radio Hamburg my radiophonic analysis of Haydn´s panmotivic “Oxford Symphony” . All Haydn´s symphonic themes are related. All Haydn´s motifs I can derive from that odd, tonally unsteady first theme of his opening movement. Which is melodically ( = ” motivically ” ) derived from , as always, Haydn´s opening Slow Introduction. Am I serious ? Yes. The whole thing flows from those opening 5 tones ? Yes. That little motivic descent of the first violins at the very beginning of his symphonic energy , eh ? Yes.

For NDR I have done several radio-analytic / motivophonic programmes that X-rayed giants of my Tipperary musical past , eg. Mozart´s G Minor String Quintet, of course, then, his G Minor Symphony, Brahms´s last great Symphony Nr. 4. and several more. I juxtaposed textlessly smithereens and orchestral bits and symphonic joists and pillars and , well, chapters plus paragraphs.

QUASI UNA FUGA

Frank Corcoran

These last years I have composed several works for different instrumental combinations with titles such as ” Quasi Un Canto” for Orchestra, ” Quasi Un Concerto” for Chamber Ensemble, etc. The “Quasi” of the different titles refers to the fact that nowadays nobody is fully innocent anymore; this composer knows too much about the various musical traditions of our globe, of human history to be able to feign naivety.
“Quasi Una Fuga” is no neo-Baroque or neo-Bachian composition. ( – Stravinsky´s weakest works were those where he sinned in this respect . I must not repeat this mistake! ). It is my salute to all the thousand fugues I had as a young music-student to compose and it is at the same time my farewell to fugal writing and my bow to the phenomenon of counterpoint itself. It is not a fugue, yet it is unmistakably ” quasi” a fugal one-movement work for string-orchestra.
You clearly hear the subject with a limping accompaniment as it ascends into ethereal heights, its descent, its variants and side-shoots , how my “quasi” exposition develops and variates and becomes lush string-foliage . Everything grows so naturally from the opening ” soggetto” till, near the end , it morphs into the Early Celtic Chant , ” Ibunt Sancti”, which , tradition tells us, was the hymn St. Brendan and his twelve intrepid monks, Atlantic sailors surely extraordinary, sang as they prepared their supper on a broad-backed ( and, one must suppose, unbaptized ) Atlantic whale somewhere up near 6th. century Greenland.
My “Quasi Una Fuga” hymns, yes, total counterpoint, total motivic proliferation and total holistic growth. This is totally stringy music !

Nowadays I divide my time between Hamburg and Italy. That´s correct. In the main. However, one of the strangest electro-acoustic works I made ( – they´re all in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris ) was
that WDR commission, ” QUASI UNA MISSA” , of 1999. The radio´s small Cologne hotel was just across the square from the Cathedral , just behind the Rhine. I´d start the day´s intensive composing early; I mean early: they opened dark doors at six , I remember. Then I´d shuffle down to the still totally deserted banks of the mighty river Rhine. My composer´s day had begun.
The making of my second WDR commission, ” Sweeney´s Vision”, two years before that, was quite different. The light was different in Berlin. His bright Einstein river-bank where the Technical University´s Electronic Studio swives the water, was different. The very Spree was different. April, well, a very different month.
Different again was the hot 2008 London performance of my very ( – well NO! , not ” very!” ) early PIANO TRIO with Darragh Morgan and his great Trio this past July 1 . It was a kind of old London granary. The Warehouse. Wood , no water. My work has stood the tensile toughness of time. Thirty Frank Corcoran years. In London I was invited to remember every detail of having imagined that ( for the pianist´s bleeding fingers ) fiendish opening page for the piano solo where I smashed the tyranny of my bar-line, – but then I had to bring in the cello´s explosione tremolando and , after this furious dialogue got started, a high violin cantilena on a totally other plane, all three moving independently. Fiendish. Memory. My poiesis.
Most recent work for altered double-bass ( – all four strings up, yes, a fourth ) and piano, the 2008 ” Quasi Un Duo” hasn´t been heard in Germany or Ireland. Not yet; great USA ” Duo Moderno” of great Allan von Schenkel premiered it just before Christmas in Bucharest and snowed-in Cluj . Certainly. We will.

I was there. As it happened in Bergamo.
It was my 1994 ICE-ETCHINGS NR. 1 for, as it happened to happen, 9 wind-instruments. Later, I will release THAT letter which will tell all….

FOUR CONCERTINI OF ICE ( 1993 ) , being a predecessor , was subtly different. For the Düsseldorfer Sinfoniker, Cond. Mark-Andreas Schlingensiepen, I had to grapple,as it happened ( – it happened ! ) with the weighing-in of his following : Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Violin, Violin, Violoncello, Double-bass, Percussion. See ? ( – Whereas my newest, sweetest ” QUASI UNA SARABANDA” ( 2009 . 11´. ) for the Swiss Ensemble ” Antipodes” is, yes, a dream : Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon , String Quintet.

2009 will also see the birth of my new ” Quasi Un Preludio” for Solo Violin ; also, I announce it here, of my “Quasi Una Sarabanda” ( – see above ) , but , then, also of hotly baked VIOLIN CONCERTO Nr. 1. for Orchestra and Solo Violin.