Frank Corcoran

Tonight is darker,
Kinder; it keeps its nose dry.
Keeps madness at bay.

If “Maranatha”,
“Advent”, all that kind of thing ?
We´d all be locked up !

1. January 6. 2014 Bayerischer Rundfunk ( B.R. Klassik )
Komponistenporträt Frank Corcoran

2. December 1. 2013 Hugh Gallery Dublin Concerts At Noon. Richard O´Donnell Percussion:
Frank Corcoran MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS for 5b Percussion
and Irish pianist.
Frank Corcoran TRAUERFELDER / GOIRT AN BHRÓIN for 4
Percussion

Get the tone right.

December 6 – after much Aer Lingus Dec. 5 ( “Hurricane Hamburg” ) grounding , I lifted off from Dublin ( ” A cold stratosphere it was of it ” ) . My Dec. 1 Sunday Noon Hugh Lane Concert had
almost not taken place…. High and vicious dynamics of and with steel, animal skins, wood and gongs , tam-tam, gongs, etc. in my MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS and – worse- those sawed cymbals and triangle suffering-points had , in the rehearsal, begun to make great Renoir´s great
” UMBRELLAS” painting Meisterwerk vibrate. Great . Would his paint flake ? Flake on ?
Well, ten minutes before my High Noon Konzert I got the wink: Yes, ye may flay, slay, bate, strike, pummel and slash sheer percussion down sillion alright. But at a price: reduce your damned decibels, reduce the/ your latent raw energy. We did. Veni. Vinci.
So far so muted. My other Corcoran master-piece, “GORT AN BHRÓIN” / “TRAUERFELDER” / “FIELDS OF SORROW” for 4 Percussion ( 1995 City Of Hamburg commission for the poor enough 50th. poor anniversary of that Auschwitz ( ! ) Liberation ( ! ) we neutered, we performed it .
Is this kind of thing normal?
No. It is not normal. But it mirrors a national contempt. For music, Irish and contemporary, high musical composition, great compositional vision. On-going.

How scutter / scatter in that scullery ? ( – Yes, became my tones and vision, certainly ) My parents had bought Killavalla House, an extraordinary SMACKGOB! ( My ten years old composer´s radar , not so fast, parents ! ) . Elsewhere my writing about 1. Head-first, Afraid, I Wriggled Into Mother´s
Horrible Hens´House, 2. I got that call to Vienna, 1981; Lothar Zagorek wanted , with his Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra , to premiere my ” Symphonies of Symphonies Of Wind. ” He did. I came. We streamed it out to- – –

Why should it always be the ” Cork-screw´s Song ? ”
Short life , bits and fragments, not even a decent look or measure de corpse, quick little
nothings. Shards , a lovely word. This our scopological, post N.S.A. world , peep or look or stare at the banal, trivial, ” The moment of my dying ” , indeed , indecency rife and our dear culture of seeing half , all born out of these sixty ( ? ) years of We Have It Good.
No place for music there, here. Sorry .

“The mind has mountains, frightful ” etc. Imagine that !
Scaling them in the silence of this Lazio night ( still balmy ), this “self” that writes imagines also a musical idea or three, a few tones, a sensuous interval ( eg. a falling , erotic sixth ) , the low flute colour. – Creatio ex nihilo , no ! Yet a marvel.

October 30. 2013 Croatian Radio , Radio 3, broadcasts:
Frank Corcoran PIANO TRIO ( from the 2013 Zagreb Biennale. Zagreb Trio )

February 15. 2014 .
N.D.R. KULTUR : Frank Corcoran´s Radiophonic Analysis of Richard Strauss´s
TILL EULENSPIEGEL ( for the 2014 Richard Strauss Year )

Work. Good work. Thinking and thinking about tones, their tinkle and sparkle and gravitas and gravity and emotional / moral weight , use, abuse. Good. Work. Sweet.

My visit this year was compressed, concentrated on Venice and sound; the whoosh and slide of the sea under my vaporetto, great grinding gears, bumps and knocks as the pilot ( yes, they are supreme waterdrivers ) manoevred his unwieldy craft in to the pontoons and out again, the roar of water-taxis out in the lagoon, waves and running spray and the gulls gone mad entirely, also the still water out near San Giorgio. Venezia, its name written on water. Water sounds. Kinetic art for La Serenissima. Tiziano , Tintoretto and Tiepolo, they heard these rhythms also, their Sea Symphony; it´s in the work, the colours and lines and huge masses of swirl.

I want to see the Irish Pavilion at this year´s Biennale di Venezia and especilly young Richard Mose´s
work ” The Enclave” there at Fondaco Marcello .
Yes, I have very clear memories of having worked at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in ( – then it was West ) Berlin in 1980 – 1981, where Richard Mosse showed last year.
For me it was bliss to be alive. I finished my first big orchestral work there, my First Symphony , ” SYMPHONIES OF SYMPHONIES OF WIND” for 23 Wind . And I also began work there on a
very different work, the Second Symphony for Large Orchestra, a mighty belt of deep brass and percussion at the very beginning . ( Hear it up on YouTube )
Yes, bliss to be alive.