Frank Corcoran

Narcissus is THE patron saint of all artists.
( I love, now in this clear mythic water, mythic me. But who then is , then, me, is myself ? Who would be this” I ” ? Then why do ” I ” love ” me ” as self-perceived in “my” mind´s very “I” ? )
Not true.
Great art, the very highest composed music does travel much farther; it aims at timeless constructs, for atemporality, wrought tougher than steel. The best climb farther and they then kick away their autobiographical ladder, swinging serene from that higher arboreal position.
“Me” – sodden art is never enough. High art, the best, conceals with Horace ALL of its author´s origins: ” I love me, Narcissus, me kisses I, I – WHO? – these watery lips”.

Frank Corcoran was a member of theI nternational Jury for

VALENTINO BUCCHI PRIZE ROME

WORLD MUSIC DAYS ZAGREB

CITTA` DI TRIESTE ( several times )

Frank Corcoran broadcasts on new music for:

Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Raidió ´Eireann, RAI
Roma, Lyric Fm, Nat. Public Radio, Radio Bremen, H.R., Bavarian Radio, W.F.M.R., W.D.R., Sender Freies Berlin, RIAS, Deutschlandfunk, Deutschland Radio, etc. etc.

They say hope is the last to die.
Wrong. It´s FORM. I have to create form in my new work. How
the different parts relate to the whole thing – and to each other. And I have to re-think this anew each time; none of your neo-this or -that with a pre-cooked formula. Good form, the best, has to feel right, must proclaim that its today is the first day of Creation. Must grow . Out of the opening music, the opening statement, idea, shape, colour, motif. Weak form is weak art.

Venetian Meditations on ‘Ochhi Sereni’
(2007) Dialog Bewegung Gambe
Besetzung: Solo
Musik: Frank Corcoran, Komp. / Gambe Solo
Dauer: 15 Minuten
Premiere: Musikhochschule Trossingen

CELLO CONCERTO 2014
VARIATIONS ON MYSELF for Chamber Orchestra 2013
IN THE DEEP HEART´S CORE for Solo Harp 2013
EIGHT HAIKUS ( S.S.A.A.T.T.B.B. ) 2013
4 PIECES FOR TWO CLARINETS 2013
5 TENORLIEDER 2012
CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA 2012
TWO UNHOLY HAIKUS ( S.A.T.B. ) 2012
A DARK SONG ( Solo Bassclarinet ) 2011
CLARINET QUINTET 2011
SONGS OF TERROR AND LOVE ( Baryton/ Pierrot Quintet ) ”
FOUR ORCHESTRAL LIEDER 2010
QUASI UNA FUGA revised version for Large Orch. 2009
NINE ASPECTS for Solo Violin and Large Choir 2008
QUASI UNA FUGA for 18 Solo Strings 2007

National Chamber Choir performs Frank Corcoran´s “CAOINE” ( 1973 ) in “Elegies”

Feb. 25 . Carlingford Heritage Centre
Feb. 26 . St. Ann´s Church, Dawson St., Dublin.
also in ” An Irish Colloquy” :
18. April Kilmacanogue, Wicklow.
19. ” Waterford.
20. ” Galway
21 ” Callan, Co. Kilkenny
22 ” Hugh Lane Gallery , Dublin

1967 in Dublin I began “studying” piano with Miss Elizabeth Huban – yes, check back to Cortot and Schnabel and she in her electric Paris before the War.
Wow! She then said : ” Now press that four part C major chord down. Again. Softly. That tenor voice isn´t singing . More tone. Now pianissimo. You hear? You listen? Listen!”
I was shocked, whocked – up till then nobody had ever told me thus to listen to that acoustic arc between my left ear , the right shoulder, fore-arm, finger and -tip pressure.
We ” did” Beethoven. SING! We touched Schoenberg´s Opus 11, we re-touched ( listening haptically ) his 6 Little Piano Pieces: I hear Miss Huban´s – to me- ” Don´t you HEAR Mahler in this chord ? ” “Listen to yourself playing that unison, descending phrase in that last, poised miniature In Memoriam eg. as performed by all the violins ( – violas, too ? – Celli ? ) of the Berlin Philharmonic…. ”
Did I practise piano ? Enough ? Enough for Miss Elizabeth Huban ? No. – I skimped, I sweated endesslessly onto and over my worried young composer´s note-paper a few bars of my own compositional concoction. My self-challenge. But she´d unlocked in me LISTENING. My trumpets salute !

Once upon a time there was this little songster in unfading June, the gab and throat well laid back, somehow a survivor bent on finishing the trellised page. Tonight´s is no story of mating with a white pony while the orchestral tin-whistle discreetly turns away. It grows. I type. It empties. Watch that passacaglia bass, would you ?

1.
Let us, hush, hush up our global rubbish musical, that lovely Pax Americana Musicale whose ( verily minimally ) musical few blaring bars pelvic – now for sixty years – ( – More ? Is it SO long ? ) defyingly occupy not only any high musical ground which may no longer exist but , whoah ! , all, I write , ALL the deafening acoustic space in between ALL, all of my five ( ? ) listening ( ? ) continents.
Observe: “Visual” Media Music = expensive technology , media- stupid claptrap – I do mean this: musical poverty. So now, the actual few bleated , blared or soaringly searing vocal semantics of mythic bull-shit …
2.
As I tonight, deep in this cozy musical eyrie hear it, the global problem cuts much deeper. Das Volk loves the image. It does so . More than tone.
3.
Ethnographers , lovely people, some of my own, may date this as they will ( – they will … ) – into the early decades of our 20 th. c.
It doth follow , yeah, that:
We have unlearned listening, we have forgotten the normal art of understanding , say, fifty five seconds of musical argument in just about any musical context, in just about any ( – Here I accept any and all ” styles” , East and West… ) of our daily listening. Ear meets composed – cooked up – sounds electric. All I´m arguing for is that we´re musically phaughed.