Frank Corcoran

Events This Week:

The CMC Salon Series features a concert by the RIAM percussion ensemble, and sees the launch of a new book celebrating the work of Frank Corcoran

24 Nov, 7pm, Katherine Brennan Hall, RIAM, Dublin
More

A concert of Frank Corcoran‘s work, including the premieres of new works, will be presented by the James Joyce Centre and Association of Irish Composers

26 Nov, 8pm, James Joyce Centre, Dublin
More

All flesh(ly)

is ” as ”

grass.

Okay, all we ( flesh/ body / intellect / psyche ) readers of this are AS / LIKE grass ( Tipperary – Irish ?

Capharnaum ? ) . I am camel- and ass- and heifer- and other oviles- delicacy , a frugal meal, si.

Calves and eejits and foals and oinsigh agus …. do become me.

Congratulations to Frank Corcoran!!

Following on Irish composer Frank Corcoran’s success in being awarded The Seán Ó Riada Composition Competition Prize 2012 (See (Sean O Riada)·by the Cork International Choral Festival for his work “Two unholy haikus”, the festival is delighted to hear of his most recent success in winning First Prize in the·2013·International Federation of Choral Music Competition for Choral Composition (See IFCM Competition). The winning work was·· EIGHT· HAIKUS· ( for· S S A A T T B B ) and the Prize will be awarded· later this Spring. ·The festival offers its congratulations to Frank Corcoran on receiving this international award.Frank_Corcoran_2

Frank Corcoran, James Joyce, and the Poetics of Myth

A Celebration of Frank Corcoran at 70

8pm, 26 November
James Joyce Centre,
35 North Great George’s St, Dublin

The Association of Irish Composers in collaboration with the James Joyce Centre present a concert marking the 70th birthday of Frank Corcoran.

On 24 November, The Contemporary Music Centre will launch a new Festschrift, a book celebrating the composer’s life and work, written by Hans Dieter Grunefeld. Two days later a number of musicians and academics will present an event of talks and music about Frank Corcoran.

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)

Quasi Una Sarabanda
Andando
Alla Marcia
Alla Giga
Sempre Col Legno
Ferocissimo
Quasi Una Sarabanda

12 November 2015 – 10:19 am

Festschrift Frank Corcoran – a celebratory book about the life and work of composer Frank Corcoran, edited by Hans Dieter Gruenefeld, will be released on 24 November. The book marks the composer’s 70th birthday, and will be launched by CMC director Evonne Ferguson at a Salon Series event at the RIAM which will feature Corcoran’s work Trauerfelder performed by the RIAM Percussion Ensemble.

Two days later, a special event celebrating the composer’s work will be presented by The James Joyce Centre in collaboration with the Association of Irish Composers. Titled Frank Corcoran, James Joyce, and the Poetics of Myth: A Celebration of Frank Corcoran at 70, the event brings together presentations, analysis, interviews and music, exploring the connections between Corcoran and the work of James Joyce.

Barra O’Seaghda will introduce the life and work of the composer, while Benjamin Dwyer will give a talk titled ‘Joycean Aesthetics, Ethnic Memory and Mythopoetic Imagination in the Music of Frank Corcoran’ (based on an article published earlier this year in Colony Literary Magazine), and will present a live interview with the composer.

Following these presentations, cellist Martin Johnson, violist Adele Johnston and violinist Alan Smale will perform a short concert of Corcoran’s music, including the world premieres of new works Rhapsodietta Joyceana and Seven Miniatures

The concert takes place on 26 November at 8pm, at the James Joyce Centre on North Great George’s St.

Programme

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)

Athena Media awarded two new BAI documentary projects

Wed 01 Jul 2015 by Athena Media

In the latest round of BAI funding, Athena Media had two successful projects, a one hour TV documentary “How to Win” presented by David Gillick for Setanta Ireland and Cross Currents, a music documentary series presented by Barry McGovern for RTÉ lyric.

Cross Currents is a landmark three-part music documentary series, narrated by award-winning actor Barry McGovern, exploring Irish composers’ work from 1975 to 1985. This defining epoch sees Irish composition flourish as young Irish composers look to Europe to re-imagine an Irish identity in music, paralleling many of the societal and economic shifts in post-de Valera Ireland.

Both How to Win and Cross Currents will air from Spring 2016 and enter development in July 2015.
– See more at: http://www.athenamedia.ie/news-details.jsp?id_news=323#sthash.1xB5igEU.dpuf

What’s it like to be Frank Corcoran?
Frank Corcoran

1. How and when did you get interested in composing?

A seven year old lad: my first piano-lesson with kindly Sister Francis at Borrisokane Convent. I wanted to re-compose sections of The Rosebud Waltz. I was then studying intensively — and intensely.

2. Is composing your ‘day job’ or do you do something else as well?

I am a music professor at Hamburg’s Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater (‘day-job’). However, when the Cúchulainn warp-spasms get me with a new composition, I work day and night also at that.

3. Where do you mostly get your ideas?

Triggers of the past: poor Mad Sweeney (turned biography and breakfast — of cress and pure, cold water — into art); a poem (Rosenstock, John Barth, medieval Irish lyrics, etc.); a scaffolding (rondo as rosary-beads, etc.); an obscure form (e.g. exploding tonal shell or mine, etc.); out of the living air…

4. What are you working on at the moment?

Tradurre-Tradire: electro-acoustic with many voices, commission of Deutschland Radio Berlin for 2 July 2004 premiere. Hope to begin a strange new work for orchestra straight after that. Obscure longings…

5. Describe your typical working day.

As with Brahms and other Viennese, the best ideas come very early, by first light; are worked and whittled and soldered at any available hour of the not long enough day.

back to top

6. What is it like hearing a new piece played for the first time?

My Platonic Form becomes Sounding Flesh. No (even excellent) performance ever is that form. But it is my sounding embodiment of it. Like so many other (I do hope) composers, I must also respect good musicians’ wishes: a nuance here, a wood-wind phrasing there. The past greats were always humble about having occasionally to watch the weight of their orchestration. Me too…

7. What has been the highlight of your career so far?

The premiere in Vienna (luminous 1981) of my Symphonies of Symphonies of Wind (O.R.F. Symphony Orchestra — glorious wind-sounds! — conducted by Lothar Zagrosek).

8. What has been the lowlight of your career so far?

When the then RTÉ Symphony Orchestra (it wasn’t their fault; the repeat performance was great!) premiered my Two Meditations on [texts by] John Barth in, I think, 1973-ish in the Francis Xavier Hall, Dublin. My work for speaker and orchestra sounded (Oh technology!) as a work for orchestra without speaker. Next time, I was on the alert.

9. What is your greatest ambition?

To keep the courage up; moral, artistic courage. To go out on the edge. With new work in different genres, e.g. my present, new Tradurre-Tradire, ‘How to translate her scream’.

10. Which musician in history do you most admire and why?

Of the many candidates, today it’s Schubert. In his death-year, he knew how he would syphilitically end. He continued to the last to produce high masterpieces, music of the highest order and, I’ll say it again, courage.

back to top

11. Which present-day musician do you most admire and why?

Ligeti, my former colleague at Hamburg, is still living. Late Boulez: works, e.g. Sur Incises, continue to stretch him and us. Lutoslawsky up to the end, a high heroism.

12. Which period of history would you most like to have lived in and why?

I’ll stay put in today. In spite of the most vicious neo-con anti-art winds known to man.

13. What is the best thing about being a composer?

I can’t let up till a new work, being born, gives me relief from the creative, itching obsession.

14. What is the worst thing about being a composer?

My fellow-Irish have not yet (will they?) accepted music as an art on a par with Irish literature, Irish painting, etc. I include fellow Irish artists — especially my Aosdána colleagues — intellectuals, cultural philosophers, pub-poets and princes, powerful potentates. Is this fear of Irish art-music, Irish composers, genetic? Education-induced? Very strange for a ‘European’ nation. Very.

15. If you weren’t a composer, what other career might you have chosen?

A thinker, tinker, philosopher, theological traveller.

back to top

16. What is your concept of heaven?

Please email Dante…

17. What is your concept of hell?

Please email Richard Perle and other U.S. neo-con think-tankers.

18. What is your favourite food?

Cannelloni cooked in any village in Umbria, Lazio or Chianti. Also well-composed Irish Stew (where’ll I get it?).

19. If someone gave you three months off with unlimited travel and living expenses, what would you do?

Month 1: Skellig Rock, composer´s camp for one. Month 2: An Umbrian village I’m keeping nameless, cannelloni, and accompaniments to lave the soul’s ear. Month 3: Mount Athos with paper and pencil (shouldn’t be too hot or waterless).

20. If you could have one thing in the world that would really help you as a composer, what would it be?

Change places — for a pleasant while — with eighteenth-century Joseph Haydn. I, too, would enjoy his Duke’s orchestral generosity.

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.

LYRIC FM / RTE ONLINE….

Countdown – Sampling the Century – Michael Dervan
– Musical Highlights per year since 1900 up to 2000.
for the year 1998 .

CORCORAN : MAD SWEENEY
Frank Corcoran ( Speaker ) , das Neue Werk NDR Ensemble / Dieter Cichewiecz. Black Box BBM 1026

Pangur Ban, this cat,
Chasing October grace-notes.
Soft ye, sleeping snakes .

Around the oat-meal
Chest,two cats cursing, sprinting .
Faster ! Then vomit.

Agus me i gcein ! ”
Glaciers toppling, melting , calve.
Cold dawn tomorrow.

The gurney loves me,
Serene at last at the end.
Buddha , great buddy.

Good Hamburg police :
” She’s dead now three stinking days ! ”
I clasped his young hand….

The pen’s nib gasps, chokes,
Sweet sleep will whisper, varnish.
” Codladh samh, my prince ! ”