Frank Corcoran

RHAPSODIC BOWING for 8 Celli Frank Corcoran

There is here not only rhapsodic bowing but also rhapsodic plonking and plinking, pizzicati and ( col legno ) striking with wood and all the myriad colour possibilities of one cello or of
eight. – Quasi a chest of viols for today.

I wrote this short essay in string choirs and cello colours for the Cello Section of the N.S.O. it is one mighty movement. Of eight minutes. The chthonic opening wooden thumps soon give way to arco lines and melodies,high rapture, rhapsodies ascending and descending. Moving lines bisect each othe , they quiver and announce, until all
gives way to the great sarabande rhythm of Bach’s

C – Major Solo Cello Suite .

After the second Bach shadow the rhapsodic bowing becomes 8-voiced rapture.
Before the high

arpeggioed harmonics take over completely in the end section, comes the repeated bass with two cello as the work streams to its tender end.

Ancient Greek : ” RHAPSOIDEIN” = ” To stitch together songs.”

I sneak back to Irishness.

For the very last time.

– I´d often cursed our lack of a socially bolstered faith in the cultural instutions which composed music (
i.e. my own music ) might seem to need.
We a peasant people? Our lack of giant shoulders onto which I´d glide and clamber as a young whetter of sound-skill and-shenannigans? ) ?

Yes.
It is a great lack, because we Irish ( still ) have no ” culturally internalized” need for or any perception of “composed music “, of ” ceol cumtha – ealaíonta”.

And yet There was one exception, a literary giant. Musicologists , nota bene: James Joyce was the greatest Irish composer. He penned the wash of sound. Joyce HEARD music and polyphonic flow and heroic courage and the composer´s cheer,
that cheer which I got as my 1997 WDR commission, ” BALTHAZAR´S DREAM”
was awarded the Bourges Festival 1999 Premier Prix.
It helped, of course, these wilting Irish shoulders. Joyce had felt the flow of phonemes and synonyms and syllabic form.

Danger lurked. I didn´t know enough European art-history. How invent the ( musical ) wheel? The sonata as a bicycle? Innocence can breed disaster, lonely, lovely.
Again Hubble´s universe, in a garden-hut near Stuttgart I composed SONATA FOR STRING ORCHESTRA ; I ” wrote ” its stringiness. – I had to. I learned to invent sound forms. I had to.
My American
MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS calls for vast percussion.
It is an Early Irish Iron Age window. I had to do it. Nobody showed me how.
I cut pre-digital BALTHAZAR´S DREAM with bleeding fingers at the Berlin Technical University in heady 1980. I had to.
Then, years later, I composed my QUASI UN LAMENTO for a very odd orchestra of three saxophones, wind, percussion, piano and strings.
Was this my scream at the violent death of Rory ( in Hamburg 1987 ) ?

And yet.Beware seeing musical composition as biography´s breakfast, the unmediated andthe raw.
Cook, ye composers !
Yet Horace´s polished art is right: I construct MY sheen, my musical art,
holier than bronze, transmuted amputations and child-cauterizations and orphaned child-emotions;
ghosts and ghosts’ dreams and -terrors.

Too simple? Certainly. And yet….

APPARENTLY I WILL DIE,

FRANK CORCORAN

Yes, I always loved my ” Liber Usualis ” , its lumpy weight , full of black
neums.

Apparently I will die, – not only Seamus Heaney and David Frost

have had that privilege.

So who´ll then see this aurora turn to dawn ? Will it turn to dawn?

Where will my universe of felt feelings and drunk drinks and
suffered tones and negative feelings and pettinesses and ecstasy and
ecstasies and big take-offs and small ( – the Phrank Cork Universe, we´ll
call it ),
my mortal sensorium , all my reeling films and thrusts towards love, towards truth,
be gone to?

We´re back to “Cogito ergo cogitans sum”, a grand tautology, the black boot-straps heaving to pull me up
further;
But now stilled for ever after my passing,
my full stop.

How on
earth will all this earth get on at all ?

To be continued.
Watch your cork.

Caoin tú féin ; but only just enough .

Beware processions, Seamus.
Get back, ye millions !

Start the Big YELL at the beginning of my big electronic piece, ” TRADURRE / TRADIRE ” !

Deep brass and tearing timps of my Second Symphony ( -recently re-heard in Blankenese, Hamburg ).

Work well worked.

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14.4.2015 NORDDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK – KLASSIK PANORAMA

Frank Corcoran hears and ” hears ” two GREAT Mozart Symphonies –

1. Nr. 29 2. Nr. 41 ” JUPITER ” .

What binds ? Unbinds them ? How “listen ” ? Those four notes ” ? WHAT – Mozart’s musical ” Unconscious ” ?

Then, later in that NDR-Klassik “meta-analytic” programme, Frank’s own new VIOLIN CONCERTO .

Finest radio.

BAYERISCHER RUNDFUNK 1988

KULTURKRITIK PROFESSOR FRANK CORCORAN : George Berkeley

“Die Iren, die die Existenz der Materie negieren… ”

( Redaktion: Dr. Willy Hochkeppel )

Frank Corcoran

Hr2 – Kultur HESSISCHER RUNDFUNK

am 5. Maerz. 2016

21.30 – 22.30

Composer Portrait Frank Corcoran ” Aus dem Tintenfass des Himmels / Baeume trinken / Sich satt”

TWO HAIKUS Frank Corcoran

Here they blew their glasses
The silicone in their lungs
Was their earthly end

March is not yet bet
Wrap up all your human parts
Don’t catch your death

That’s right, Frank Corcoran used as music examples in his CICLO 1.

Grainne Yeats : “Faigh An Gleas ” ( ” Trova la chiave “)

“Tabhair Dom Do Lamh” ( “Da Mihi Manum ” )

The Chieftains: ” La Marcia di O’Neill ”

“Il Lamento per Limerick”

” A Una Bhain ” : ” La Bella Una”

Frank Corcoran ” The Quare Hawk ”

“Caleno Costure Me ” ( William Byrd )

“La Lavandaia Irlandese ( Johnny Doherty )

CICLO DUE – FRANK CORCORAN

Grainne Yeats “Eibhlin A Ruin”.

Handel: Il Coro dell’ Halleluja

“An Speic Seodrach ” ( Willy Clancy )

Concerto di Carolan

“The Princess Royal” ( Carolan )

“Slan Le Ceol ” ”

“Ple’ara’cha” ( Sean O Riada )

CICLO TRE

“Tabhair Dom Do Lamh” ( Grainne Yeats )

“Ta an Oiche Dorcha” ( La Notte e’ scura )

“The Wounded Hussar ” ( Tony McMahon )

“Robin Adare ” ( Beethoven )

“Eileen A Ruin” II (Grainne Yeats )

“Lamento Per Glencoe ” Beethoven

Beethoven WoO 152.6

“Silent O Moyle ” Mary O’Hara

“Die Letzte Rose ” Flotow

Frank Corcoran: ritrattodell’artistadagiovanechevolevacantare

CICLO QUATTRO

An Speich Seodach Willy Clancy

“Echoes Of Georgian Dublin”

Piano Concerto 1. John Field

Notturno ”

” A Una Bhain” 2.

“Finnegans Wake The Dubliners

CICLO CINQUE

I Giardini Zoologici ”

Concerto per Orchestra Frank Corcoran

“Ye Rambling Boys Of Pleasure ” Planxty

” Taller Than Roman Spears ” John Buckley

2. Quartetto d’ Archi John Kinsella

“Lamento per i Morti” Maire Ni Direain

Trio per Pianoforte, Violino e Violoncello FRANK CORCORAN

Songs of Terror and Love

Frank Corcoran ( 2010 )

1. Chi pro Cristo v’ empazzato / Pare afflitto e tribulato.
Chi pro Cristo ne’ va pazzo / Alla gente si par matto.
Chi vole entrare in questa danza / Trov’ amor désmesuranza!

2. Allegom’ en seppultura / Un ventr’i lupo envoratura.

E l’arliquie en cacatura / En espineta e rogarìa!

He who raves for Christ’s insane / Most afflicted, his great pain.
Who for Christ loses his mind / He looks lost to all mankind.
But he who begins this dancing / Measureless love he´s sure to find…
I chose as my last tomb and shroud / A wolf’s belly after he’s devoured
Me; my remains that wolf’s shit / In among thorns in a deep pit!

3. Che farai, Fra Jacovone? Ei venuto al paragone!

Well, what now, Fra Jacopone? Now you’re come to your trial!

The lodging that they gave me / ‘S a hole under ground – no denial

La presone che m’è data / Una casa sotterata!
Arèscece una privata / Non fa fraga de moscone!

Here a stinking jakes disgorges; it won´t smell of perfumed roses!
They placed my legs in leg-irons; now they rustle like sirens.

Porto jette i sparvèri / Soneglianno nel mio giro.
Nova danza ce po´ odire / Chi sta apresso mea stazzone.

Listen above! – Hear askance! Can you hear my new dance?

4.

O Papa Bonifazio, molto ‘ai jocato al mundo.
Pensome che iocondo non te porrai partire…
Per subita ruina / Ei preso en tua masone!
E null’ om se trovone / A poterti guarire.

O Pope Bonifazio / With this world you played ”Peek Oh!”
Yet I judge that your dying / Will be more than mere sighing!
Your ruin has reached you / In your palace it breached you!
No doctor can heal you! No nurse dares to feel you!

El mondo non n’è cavallo / Che sse lass’ enfranare,
Che ‘l pòzzi cavalcare / Secondo tuo volere!

This world´s not a race-horse / To goad on with your spurs
To rein in at your whim / Till with your desire it concurs.

Dell’ aneme redente / Par che ne curi poco.
La ‘ve t’accunci ‘l loco / Saperai lo al partire!

– It’s not all souls’ salvation / It´s you´ve reaped your damnation.
At your parting, self-chosen / You will find out your destination!

Frank Corcoran writes from his Italian composer’s hide-out now, his Sacred Bunker :

1984 I wrote for NDR KULTUR Hamburg my big radio-analysis of Alban Berg’s 4 ALTENBERGER

ORCHESTERLIEDER :

” DER UNBEKANNTE BERG “.

Yes, young Berg’s for us still today gob-startling , – smacking Opus 4, his orchestral chuzpa , his flair and his, well, compositional impudence .
His courage, moral and musical, did of course upset Viennese apple-carts
( including his beloved teacher, Arnold Schoenberg… ). They are fresh today still with their dizzing daring; Berg’s high-trapeze soprano act with the text, those 5 aphorisms
by the Austrian, then scandalous, author , Peter Altenberg .
Berg risked all.
It was worth it.
Of course the vast orchestra is late Late-Romantic.
Of course he juggles twelve tones .
Of course his treatment of the melodic line and the orchestral forces bundles up all we heard from the outgoing Central European musical tradition…

What did I learn from young Alban Berg’s extraordinary score?

Extend my instrumental limits!
Make the twelve tones melodic, human, beautiful!
Keep up a young Irish composer’s COURAGE in a turgid sea of indifferent banalities,
idiots and vicious, ignorant commerce…