Frank Corcoran

Irish Composer
Home » Archive by category "Humble Hamburg Musings" (Page 79)

WE GOT OVER DE CHRISSEMAS GRAND. JUST ABOUT….

Posted on December 29, 2014 By

2014 brought a goodly harvest with the new MY ALTO RHAPSODIES  ( Contralto and Orchestra ) ,  a lively flurry of choral works, the THREE PIECES FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO, my autumn  3 PIXELS FOR OBOE QUARTET, other and others          . 2015 will bring 2 important Corcoran premieres  1.  February 15  in New York   QUASI UNA STORIA for String Orchestra ( North South , dir. Max Lifchitz )  and  then          2.  March 13 in Dublin ,  CELLO CONCERTO  ( N.S.O. / Kenneth Montgomery and mighty soloist Martin Johnson  ).

Hard, honest work . How compose extended forms ( – it’s hard enough to writhe one minute of music ; to lick together five minutes is an eternity ) . Hard, too, to separate the work of creation from that of dissemination. Best not even try ? Vital not to lose the way for the dormant musical imagination, to be ready to pounce on an idea, any motiv, a formal concept, an instrumental combination or mass of colours, densities, knorls and knots, a dramatic idea. May the New Year crackle, burst birthing. Bring courage. Dare keep going in a world of cosmic indifference and against the tide of sonic rubbish. Dirty.

ODE TO A HAMBURG SLEETY MORNING

Posted on December 20, 2014 By

Preparing for just exactly what ?  Misty carols and mystical cooking , a strong red bottle, little children, late capitalism’s late collapse, the epiphany in the ordinary ( we hope ) and something to save the banal or the trivial or both. Full belly or vacuous mind, mountains of food for thought. The angels did sing. Pentatonically, Celtic-Chinese, I presume. In my new AN IRISH CAROL we expand from one voice to soaring four, from the simple to the full-throated roar and back again. Simple. But I thought of it first.

Art in the small. Nor was the “Irish” world of Aingeal MacCraith , 1640-ish, any less ” baroque”  than Bernini’s Rome , Borromini’s unfortunate sword, his Christmas dinner. “Dun”  =  “Palazzo” , certainly, so also ” the dusky heart”, therfore  “yearnings”, therefore  ” intimations of immortality”, all that and more at this wintersolstice.

MAD APRIL 2015 BECKONS AND BLUSTERS

Posted on December 19, 2014 By

 

4. April 2015                                       NDR KULTUR       “Prisma  Musik  ”

Frank Corcoran’s big radiophonic analysis / juxtaposition /  of Mozart’s Symphony Nr. 29 and Mozart’s ” Jupiter ”  . SeaNua also with mighy Mozart.

What do these two great orchestral works share ? Not share ? –  But also their themes ?  What about that 4-note cell ?  His ” C D F E  ”  motiv through all four movements of the ” Jupiter ”  ? But also in the earlier, delightful Nr. 29, eh ?

THE LISTENING EYE

Posted on December 17, 2014 By

Hmmm. Yes, this scopological age. All want to watch. Look. See. Heigh ho! Film is the thing then, the peek, the DVD, the glotz and peep, Tom…. Seeing  through the mirages in poor Plato’s Cave is beleiving . Why is this? Appearance; mirage. Not really epiphany.

Hmmm. We apparently have lost the appetite for and any ability to listen. To follow a musical argument of even minimal complexity beyond a few seconds, therefore onlyaural tit-bits or scraps.

Hmmm. The scopological versus the listening in to sound , the ( jumpy ) eye versus the ( concentrated ) ear. Is that it ? Or: ” Eye hath not seen nor ear heard…  ” . Pity.

PAPER OR PIXEL – THAT IS THE QUESTION

Posted on December 9, 2014 By

Working now on Dvorak’s CELLO CONCERTO – a mighty work ; it ( –  plus Lutoslawsky’s ) lurks  behind my own  Concerto  ( Premiere March 13 2015 with the N S O / Kenneth Montgomery / Soloist:  Martin Johnson  ) . Its ” big ” ATTITUDE ( of the orchestra and the solo instrument )  ; its aura (  Yes,Czech – though I have no thought of working neo-Slavic or neo-Celtic tricks into mine….  )  and its power. Courage . The big slam. Lutoslawsky’s work also towers, a giant act of instrumental courage , the composer’s  belief that tones matter, that his music as sounding architecture must soar and shout against cosmic indifference;  against societal, medial  indifference.

“You’re On Earth – There’s NO Cure For That ! “

Posted on December 9, 2014 By

To the  EDITOR / Irish Times  .         11.11.2014

             Dear Editor,

I weep for the Irish Times and the Royal  Irish Academy’s  post-colonialist  ” panel of experts ”  and their  pale Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks. 

 ”  M’or  Mo N’aire ”  indeed for  their
post-colonialist ignorance of  contemporary Irish art-music . Over twenty years ago now the Irish Times portraited me as an Irish composer  abroad  who had no chance of being understood at home  (  – it meant being understood by our Irish  intellectuals, leaders, arts administrators and  panels of ” experts” )  as an Irish artist working in sound , tone, silence; seeing an Irish  symphony, sonata,  chorus, opera, concerto,  as on an exact par with  an Irish  book, painting, sculpture, play, poem, building. Certainly I weep.

For your “experts” with their 100 Irish Artworks  nothing  has changed . An  Irish ” cumad’oir ceoil”   has no place in their 100 post-colonial artworks. – Yet how could she ?  In 1981  my  “SYMPHONIES OF SYMPHONIES OF WIND” was premiered in Mozart’s Vienna with the O.R.F.S..O under  Lothar Zagrosek.  Silence at home.  (  Why ? Well, the  Irish

“post- colonial”  canon of what are and are not  Irish arts doesn’t  perceive Irish composed music as  a part of  Irish intellectual tradition.   )   My   ” JOYCEPEAK  MUSIK  ”   won the German Studio  Akustische Prize in 1996.   –  Yawn at home..  Yes.  Post-colonial.  My electro-acoustic  “SWEENEY’S  VISION ”  won the 1999 Bourges Festival  Premier Prix.   West German Radio commissioned  my  ” QUASI UNA MISSA”   which then  won the 2002  Swedish EMS Prize.
A  post-colonial narration of  Ireland and Irish musical composition indeed  ?     Last year my choral “EIGHT HAIKUS”  won the International Federation for Choral Music First Prize Outright .  ( Here I am not blowing my trumpet but my musical  nails )
Your revered panel’s  post-colonial  blinkers are blind to  composed music on the Irish island .  Abroad  there is  a healthy
recognition of  four generations of  Irish composers .   I  weep now  for your  woeful bias, the disgrace of your lazy,  unexamined definition of Irish arts.

Yours etc.

Frank Corcoran , Irish Composer, Member of Aosdana.

On Talking About My Music or Writing The Programme-Note .

Posted on December 6, 2014 By

Talk about ” Quasi – Talking ” about my own work  ; and writhing about my own works. Difficult.

Why ?  –   Because you sense :

1. I am not getting it. The full self-analysis ; nor even the musical composition, its true genesis and how its substance is born and takes off in full flight, well-wrought,  well-rounded off .

2. Self-deceit is never distant , self-diddlement. Tales heard from another . A story “bentrovato” if not quite how it really was, perhaps ?

3. When is writing writhing ?  Riding blissfully over truth  – what truth ?

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