Frank Corcoran

NEW YORK in April 2011

CHURCH OF CHRIST AND SAINT STEPHEN

Frank Corcoran : Songs of Terror and Love ( Texts from Jacopone Da Todi )

Max Lifchitz, conductor
The North/South Consonance Ensemble
David Sailsberry Fry, Baryton

Haikus in der Kathedrale: Frank Corcoran erhält den Seán Ó Riada Preis 2012
Frank Corcoran erhält den Seán Ó Riada Preis 2012. Foto: Hans-Dieter Grünefeld
(nmz) –
Ein substanzielles Sujet für zeitgenössische Chormusik zu finden, erfordert ein Sensorium für Stimmen und stimmhafte Befindlichkeiten. Zumal in sakraler Umgebung, zumal im katholisch, aber eben auch keltisch geprägten Irland. Da findet Musik manchmal in musikalischen Zwischenwelten statt. So beim Cork International Choral Festival mit dem Seán Ò Riada Composition Competition.

They just went live with the essay on Colony…SEE: http://www.colony.ie/#!joyceanaesthetics/csdx

Text, audio, manuscripts and photos…..I think it looks, sounds and reads
well….this is a very hip journal and everyone on Dublin in reading this right
now……!!!!!!

Access through CHROME…..NOT Safari

( Ben Dwyer on Frank Corcoran’s music and musicks )

NDR _ Kultur PRISMA MUSIK : Saturday Dec. 3. 20.00 – 22.00

FRANK CORCORAN “listens in ” to

SCHUBERT’S STRING QUINTET in C Major ….

After 22.00 then, Frank Corcoran’s 4. Symphony ( National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland , Cond. C. Pearce )

Corcoran Symphonies Nos. 2-4
Frank Corcoran was born in Tipperary in 1944 and studied in Dublin, Rome and later in Berlin with Boris Blacher. His [symphony] symphonies are something of a revelation
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Author:
Michael Stewart
Corcoran Symphonies Nos. 2-4

Symphony No. 2
Symphony No. 3
Symphony No. 4

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Rather like the image of Skelling Rock in Ireland that adorns the cover of this CD, Corcoran’s symphonies stand implacable and without apology before the listener: as challenging as Birtwistle, rougher-hewn than Maxwell Davies. The works of Varese and Bussotti are perhaps a better comparison. These are soundscapes in the purest sense of the word, edifices to lose oneself in.
Corcoran is an illusionist with time – Symphonies Nos 3 and 4 are approximately 15 minutes apiece and yet time seems to collapse and expand under a law of its own in these works. In the booklet-notes, Corcoran speaks of ‘virtual space’ and of ‘a logic out of chaos’, and I would go along with that. There is much truth too, in his remark that ‘ears understand the logic of my story’, and they do, no matter how uncharted or disruptive the soundscape. And the ‘story’ traverses all three symphonies: there is continuity of thought and a consistency of style here. His mastery of orchestral colour and texture is impressive too, and has there ever been more of an anti-ending to a symphony than in his Fourth?
Much praise must go to the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and to conductor Coleman Pearce who deliver these ‘dolmens in sound’ (to quote Corcoran again) with much commitment, and also to Marco Polo for bringing us this most enterprising issue. A real discovery.’

Maccagno, Italy

Professor Benjamin Dwyer was the fourth annual Irish Artist in Residence at the 2016 soundSCAPE summer festival for

new music in Maccagno, Italy.

During his three-day residency, Dwyer presented a lecture entitled “Traditional Irish and Postmodern Contours in

the music of Gerald Barry, John Buckley, Roger Doyle and Frank Corcoran”

NORDDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK
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Sonnabend,
SENDEWOCHE 49
3. Dezember
Nachtrag zu Woche 48
Prisma Musik
Thema: Kleine Schule des musikalischen Hörens: Frank Corcoran hört das Streichquintett C-Dur von Franz Schubert
Das Werk gehört zu seinen letzten und gilt Kennern als Gipfel dessen, was in dieser Kunst überhaupt möglich ist. Generationen haben sich den Kopf darüber zerbrochen, wie Schubert zum Beispiel die magische Stimmung des Adagio-Satzes erzeugt hat.
Der irische Komponist Frank Corcoran versucht in der Kleinen Schule des musikalischen Hörens den Geheimnissen dieser Musik auf die Spur zu kommen, die einem unbegreiflichen Schaffensrausch auf dem Kranken- und schließlich Sterbebett entsprang.
(Sonnabend, 3. Dezember, 20.00 – 22.00 Uhr, NDR Kultur)

Why have Irish composers been ignored for so long?
Music critic Michael Dervan writes about his journey to discovering more Irish composers in his book The Invisible Art, which is nominated for a Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award.
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Image: New Island

Music critic Michael Dervan (who has been music critic at the Irish Times since 1986) loves music – but realised as he grew up that Irish composers were often hidden musicians. With his book Invisible Art, he set out to address this. For the book, he commissioned pieces by a range of expert writers about Irish music from 1916 – 2016.
Ireland stands unique among the nations of the world in having a musical instrument, the harp, as its national emblem. Irish musicians of all hues are widely celebrated. Riverdance has been an international phenomenon for two decades. Flautist James Galway and the rock band U2 are known all over the world. Singer Sinéad O’Connor is famous enough for her behaviour on US chat shows to create international headlines. And traditional music is even more widely dispersed than the phenomenon of the Irish pub.

Composing the Island, the September 2016 festival of 27 concerts over 19 days, was a pretty hefty event by any measure. And it was not even designed to celebrate the full history of composition in Ireland, just the works of the last hundred years. There has been nothing quite like it before. Anywhere. Ever.
Yet the tradition of music it salutes has long had in Ireland a Cinderella-like position, an invisibility that can sometimes seem like the airbrushing or photoshopping into non-existence of a major art form.

Composers have felt the slight acutely. ‘I’m a Composer’—‘You’re a What?’ was the title Frank Corcoran gave an essay he contributed to The Crane Bag back in 1982. It was his way of explaining that Irish people simply didn’t see being a composer as a serious or full-time occupation.

Frank Corcoran, James Joyce, and the Poetics of Myth
A Celebration of Frank Corcoran at 70
James Joyce Centre
35 North Great George’s Street Thursday 26. November
8pm

In collaboration with

The James Joyce Centre

&

The Association of Irish Composers

PART ONE
Barra O Seaghdha: Frank Corcoran: An Introduction
Benjamin Dwyer: Joycean Aesthetics, Ethnic Memory and Mythopoetic Imagination in the Music of Frank Corcoran

PART TWO
Benjamin Dwyer Interviews Frank Corcoran

Frank Corcoran: Rhapsodietta Joyceana (world première) (Martin Johnston, cello)

Frank Corcoran: Variations on A Mháirín de Barra (1995) (Adele Johnston, viola)

Frank Corcoran: Seven Theses on Joyce and Music (Frank Corcoran)

Frank Corcoran: Joycespeak Musik (tape, 1995)

Frank Corcoran: Seven Miniatures (world première) (Alan Smale, violin)
1) Quasi Una Sarabanda
2) Andando
3) Alla Marcia
4) Alla Giga
5) Sempre Col Legno
6) Ferocissimo
7) Quasi Una Sarabanda

Frank Corcoran
Born 1944 in Borrisokane, Tipperary, Frank Corcoran studied philosophy, music, ancient languages and theology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, University College Dublin and the Pontifical Lateran University, Rome. Further studies in composition were undertaken with Boris Blacher in Berlin. In 1980, he took up a composer fellowship the Berliner Künstlerprogramm. In the 1980s, he taught in Berlin, Stuttgart and Hamburg, where he was Professor of Composition and Theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater. He was a Fulbright Visiting Professor and a Fulbright Scholar in the U.S. in 1989 and 1990, and has been a guest lecturer at, among others, CalArts, Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee), Princeton University and New York University. He participated in the 2005 Joyce Summer School at Trieste University giving a paper entitled ‘Joyce and Music’. Corcoran’s output includes orchestral, choral, chamber and electroacoutic music. His Joycepeak – Musik won the Studio Akustische Kunst 1995, Sweeney’s Vision won the Bourges Festival Premier Prix in 1999, and Quasi Una Missa won the 2002 Swedish E.M.S. Prize. Two Unholy Haikus took first prize at the Cork International Choral Festival in 2012 and his Eight Haikus was awarded first prize at the International Foundation for Choral Music in 2013. Corcoran’s music has been performed by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Crash Ensemble (Ireland), the Cantus Chamber Orchestra (Zagreb), Wireworks Ensemble (Hamburg), the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Irish Chamber Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and Antipodes (Switzerland), among many others. His music has been recorded on the Marco Polo, Wergo, Composers Art and Black Box labels. Recent large-scale works include the Cello Concerto, written for Martin Johnston and the Violin Concerto, composed fro Alan Smale, both premièred with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra; and Quasi Una Storia for String Orchestra (2015) for the North South Chamber Orchestra (New York). Frank Corcoran is a founding member of Aosdána and lives in Hamburg and Italy.

Three key Arts Council funded music organisations formed a partnership to deliver this initiative: the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, the Contemporary Music Centre and the Association of Irish Choirs. The publication,Choirland: An Anthology of Irish Choral Music, is a collection of 15 pieces by Irish composers for unaccompanied mixed choir.

The music ranges in difficulty from the simple to perform, to the more challenging. From arrangements of traditional melodies, new settings of familiar texts and strikingly original works, the selection encompasses a wide array of styles, which illustrate the diversity and vibrancy of Irish choral music. Each piece is presented with performance notes designed to aid conductors and singers alike, and the book includes a CD recording of the music by the National Chamber Choir of Ireland conducted by Artistic Director, Paul Hillier.

Representatives from all three organisations were present at the launch and the National Chamber Choir of Ireland, under Artistic Director Paul Hillier performed works by Ben Hanlon, Colin Mawby and David Fennessy, all of which are included in Choirland.

Choirland is available to purchase from www.cmc.ie

Contents:

Gerald Barry (b.1952) – Long time (2011)
Enda Bates (b.1979) – Pauper’s Lament (2010)
Seóirse Bodley (b.1933) – I will walk with my love (1981)
Brian Boydell (1917–2000) – Come Sleep (1964)
Rhona Clarke (b.1958) – Regina Coeli (from Two Marian Anthems) (2007)
Frank Corcoran (b.1944) – Caoine (1975)