Frank Corcoran

Dec. 12 2007

Ireland House, New York : FRANK CORCORAN – AN ” IRISH ” COMPOSER ?

Dec. 29 2007 Norddeutscher Rundfunk 3.

Frank Corcoran´s radiophonic 2 – hours ” Hear – Analysis ” of

Mozart´s G Minor Symphony , Nr. 40.

CHRISTMAS COMES EARLIER EACH AIRY YEAR

Damned to sparagmos and pithishit, synthetic psychology with very little child´s tinsel left over ; that´s one way to pitch our human fate´s faith. The parataxis in some of the less bloody Psalms, of course, hints at golden glory Halleluia , the Plan B, we´ll have to call it.
My contrapuntal skill at surviving must marry a ” blow, bugles, blow” Chorus with a ” Is it that bodybags await us all ! ” Cantata .
Take as my title : “The birth of macrocounterpoint out of merry spirits at this our rapidly nearing Christmas Solstice”, that´s what Ishould be lecturing on, flying out soon from cold Hamburg to cold New York. Watch the tail-wind, whatever I do.
As geese fatten, turkeys will tremble. Each one, all. At all the Good News.
The house-mover cometh, ´tis no Holy Joke , rather more of a ” He flatteneth what he willeth , he filleth small joybooks and large kids´books into smelly cardboard boxes. Nor is he mocked by marching music. ” – I´ll chance an unwieldy title, ” The Unholy Alliance of Psalmic Parataxis.”
The house-movers hie nigh and our table heaped for the Feast .
This blog has in the past been known to equate altars with table-cloths and the knife that killed the golden goose or the Holy Solstice turkey. It now has the gall to question its blog´s festive joy, the aerodynamics of my December flight to North America. Westward ho and the wrapped child´s toy steam-rolle at Christmas .
Is there here the makings of another good Princeton lecture ? – The paratactics of the Psalms before December dark sneaks up on me totally ? ( Remember 2006´s blog , pre X-mas ? ) Music was born out of ritual killing and festive turkey-stuffing . How hymn it ?
If I am composed of time, I am temporal, my personal memory has been growing since first I graced my perambulator. I am who am. I am becoming. Will I be ? A has-been, also. Watch the tail-wind ( all that frosty flight-path back from New York ) above at eleven thousand metres. That golden goose on our Christmas table is, or it certainly was purely temporal .
No more she´ll cackle: ” who will google Mr. Google ? ” Our turkey died for thee and thee. After the house-move is over, after the ball is done, the time for tinsel ´s come. Suspend the sparagmos; desist insisting ” I am but pissishith ” . Or ” pithishith ” either !
There will be time before the tail-wind blows and the music stops hymning its lie . He filleth our festive cards and our carol texts and our turkey leavings into the cardboard house-movers´ boxes. How can parataxis face up to that, ye Psalms?

—————–
Weitergeleitete eMail:
Thema: Fwd: Christmas Hies 4
Datum: 16.11.2007 15:36:53 Westeuropäische Normalzeit
Von: FBCorcoran
An: FBCorcoran

In einer eMail vom 16.11.2007 14:07:24 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt FBCorcoran:
CHRISTMAS COMES EARLIER EACH AIRY YEAR

Damned to sparagmos and pithishit, synthetic psychology with no child´s tinsel left over ; that´s one way to pitch human fate´s faith. The parataxis in some of these less bloody Psalms, of course, hint at golden glory Halleluia , the Plan B, we´ll have to call it.
My contrapuntal skill marries the ” blow, bugles, blow” Chorus with ” Is it , then, that bodybags await us all ! ”
And ” The birth of macrocounterpoint out of the merry spirits of this our rapidly nearing Christmas Solstice”, is that what I´ll lecture on, flying out very soon from cold Hamburg to cold New York ? Watch the tail-wind.
As geese fatten, turkeys tremble on this blessed night. Each one, all. At all the Good News.
The house-mover cometh, no Holy Joker but more of a ” He flatteneth what he will, he filleth small little joybooks into cardboard boxes. He is not mocked by marching music. ” – Is that what I should be lecturing on at Princeton , how music can at all contain Our Snowy Solstice Synthesis ? Or will I chance the unwieldy title, ” The Unholy Alliance of Psalmic Parataxis. Movers move house and the table heaped for the Feast .”
This blog has in the past been known to equate altars with table-cloths plus the knife that killed the golden goose or turkey or whatever . It has had the gall to question my festive joy or my aerodynamics in transatlantic flight, Westward ho, and the wrapped Christmas toy steam-roller. – Is there the makings of another good New York or Princeton lecture here ? – Paratactics before any December dark sneaks up on me ? Music was born out of the festive ritual killing , turkey-stuffing, you agree ? Does my very own macrocounterpoint lie in the very moment that it hymns ? And yet I am time, I am temporal, my personal memory growing and growing since first I ruled a perambulator. I am who am. I become. Will I be ? A has-been, too, my tail-wind ( all my frosty flight-path back from New York ) fading above at eleven thousand metres. My golden goose on the Christmas table is, or it certainly was pure time. A has been now , just like her table-companion, the turkey. No more she´ll cackle: ” But who will google Mr. Google ? ” She died. For thee and thee. Our fine turkey , also. After the house-move is over, after the ball is done. The time for tinsel ´s come. Suspend the sparagmos; desist insisting I am but pissishith. Or pithishith either ! There will be time. Before the tail-wind takes over and the music stops hymning, singing its lie or not. He fillith festive cards and carols and fine turkey leavings into cardboard house-movers´ boxes. How will parataxis face that, ye Psalms?

Yes, I do flutter and I do phight and I struggle and I rattle against these bars, this cage, that oaf, all these our tribulations and trials and our ( Pauline , of course – that unwashed , unwived mendicant preacher was a poet of world-class…. ) cross. The good fight, – perhaps it´s this PLUS AN GLÓIR which is the motor of culture, the real moth´s sizzle ? The mire and the quag and the glory behind or beyond ennui ( that foe which never sleepeth ? ? ) . Without me Deutschlandfunk would have no REAL content to broadcast to the edges of poor Steven Hawkings´ universe, apparently…. Content is very fine ; yet formless it lieth denuded there , unable to phly , phight or phlutter .

” They also serve who only stand and wait ” ( John Milton ) .

Did Milton ever hear of Bash ? Or of O ? No . Nor viceversa . Is this question trivial or quodrivial ? Both.

Why?

Frank Corcoran Interview Video for 2008 Dokumenta Kassel on:

http://www.documenta-dock.net/#p59

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.

Dec. 29 N.D.R. 3 KULTUR . “Prisma – Musik ” . Frank Corcoran gives a two-hour Höranalyse
of Mozart´s G-Minor Symphony Nr. 40 .
The hearable unity between the themes and movements , the bearable behind the unbearable.

Will I talk about this at Princeton , December 14 coming up by stealth ? There IS a logical growth out of pre-born phonemes . Suffering, passive and active, does flow towards the Sacred Word, horror, fascinating and terrible, it is indeed the long shadow of human ex-istence and my words become Irish pipe-music. Treachery is ubiquitous in language, in memory, in blogging perception , whether the words and tones are self-referential or only half so. My Cello Solo-Suite I wrote in 1970. Did I ? It was influenced by Bach, Kodaly, Henze, that over-blown Reger. No art without the past. Níl séarach gan sanctóir. Suppose they hesitantly ask if even those who crucify can expect salvation ? How will Mozart compose not a programme but a correlative in sounds? Who´s the idiot now ? The future is obviously on the minds of a group like Ensemble Modern. Yet the future is unknowable. It´s when I look back that I see the Taj Mahal. ( Sorry about that ) . Every good art-work is a vision heard. In this short blog my theme is farewell. Sound is life. Sound takes leave of this world, of the women and nature of 7 th. c. Ireland. Machine- and human sound sing their last song. Ad multos annos is fine for some. Language does envy tone. Oh if the leaves of the old year were gold itself. As a young lad, my ears were clean.

Why should I care? Let them be heard ? By whom ? Vanish unheard ? Why exactly would this be a pity ? – They are born, they are long born ( I admit it, a difficult birth in each case, each time the breaking of electro-acoustic waters long before. Still ), they´ve long left this house of liberty and lounge in hope of just what now ?
I tend to group the three tallest ( i.e. my longest ; yes, musical duration, never a mere joke, is and stays a prime mystery of time – what´s five minutes of music ? Sixteen minutes ? Watch how your watch is mocked by formed sound ) of my electronic children together .

” SWEENEY´S VISION” , triggered off , some say, by Early Medieval Irish psychiatry in one sense, in another was just the oldest of compositional problems all over again : how ´ll I spin it out ? How derive it all from Bar One ? I was proud when it won the Premier Prix at the Bourges Festival 1999 . Long and lanky, it has great Shannon ( and Rhine ) head-waters , ” Sweeney” ululations and at one point almost a bit of Mozart´s Clarinet Concerto from a whale-wail . I tend to hear nowadays yet other points of connection to its ( also lanky ) sister of 1999, ” QUASI UNA MISSA” , than anyone has yet admitted .

Here in ” QUASI ” is, as any donkey can hear , a more specific wordiness celebratory, it´s audible scaffolding is more up-front . I´ll have to hear it again on my next birthday.

” TRADURRE = TRADIRE ” ( – but is it really ? Always and ever ? ) is the third of the Three Electric Lanks. Over the top, it
is this special sisters´ polyphony , the mutating texts and morphing choral whispers, screams, groans, snorts, farts and the music of those thirty three pipers at my future funeral. The Irish , English and German translations are treacherously traded , I recycle bits , perhaps it is a strange sonic coinage at this stage of this Irish composer´s cosmic anonymity.

Between the very first two children of my computer-loins there was also that strange ( and shortest ) ” SWEENEY `S FAREWELL ( – I´ll give it its full title in this Blog ) TO THE WOMEN OF IRELAND ” . It´s dense roilings are not even five minutes long ; where is the border between deep physical earth-sounds, human birth-pangs, a composed kingdom of massive sounding beasts of the ocean, monsters of the cosmos?

Seventeen ( they were long ) years before in 1997 I bore ” SWEENEY ´S VISION ” there had been an analogue boy-child ; ” BALTHAZAR´S DREAM ” I called these bleeding, cut and cooked sound-chapters of suffering ; it was, after all, my Berlin in my 1980. I was plucky. No digital magic on any compositional horizon back then . My Borgean vision sufficed. The technology was woeful. And guitar-sounds became siren, became rain ; human suffering became hammer – blows at a cross, Borges´s Spanish Cross. This electrical essay I felt compelled to make. Why ? You feel it . I certainly can. Ritual killing might just be fun if you´re on the right side. My Balthazar was not.
Why now should I care if these , my electro-childer , ever make their way ( they do ) through European Festivals ? Corcoran´s Third Law ( – there is to date no First Law in sight, nor no sign of a Second ) of Transcendental Musical Goodness forbids any connection between an art-work´s quality and its mixed reception anywhere, any time, in any imaginable universe . Let these four and a half brave sons or daughters of my electric loins ( – break down , weeping , my good taste and sense ) ” exist” . Add to them, I daresay, ” JOYCEPEAK – MUSIK ” of 1996 ( – again, a prize followed; – Oh how it mattered ! ) , my yellowing prints of a long faded Musical Dublin where neither I nor my peasant, down-country family had ever felt comfortable in, now my kissing the feet of The Master Of All Irish Composers In Trieste .

Dec. 12 2007 New York University / Ireland House

FRANK CORCORAN – IRISH COMPOSER Portrait

Dec. 13 Princeton University . Music Dept. Portrait Frank Corcoran

Dec. 14 Princeton University . Frank Corcoran ” THE DOLMEN´S LAMENT “

January 13 . 2008

100 Years Ago – The Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin Was Opened ! We mark this with :

Gallery At Noon Concert . 12.00 The Callino Quartet premieres :

Frank Corcoran´s THIRD STRING-QUARTET ( 2006. 14´. )

Nov. 21 . Dundalk Institute of Technology / EAR Electronic Festival :

14.00 Frank Corcoran ” SWEENEY´S VISION ” ( 1999 Bourges Festival Premier

Prix. Why ? )