Frank Corcoran

A number of new works by Frank Corcoran will be performed in September and October.
The Still-Life with Guitar trio will premiere Corcoran’s work for flute, viola and guitar Seven Cubist Miniatures for Cardiff at the National Museum of Cardiff on 13 September. The ensemble, featuring Emma Coulthard on flute, Philip Heyman on viola and Michael McCartney on guitar, is dedicated to performing new or rarely heard music featuring the guitar and performers.

In October, the award-winning University of the Philippines Madrigal Singers will premiere Corcoran’s ” 8 Haikus ” . The piece, written to texts by the composer himself, was selected as the winner out of 637 entries of the International Federation for Choral Music’s Second International Competition for Choral Composition. The performance will take place in Manila on 5 and 6 October.

Jostle quickly the choral tones, an interval, that odd sigh in octaves for my sopranoes and altos; that splayed bass – cluster :… I look again at my 1976 choral HERR JESU CHRIST for, i- t was then thus, – S A T B – Paul Fleming; a good German Baroque doctor and dichter … But he
put de fear of God in me that year ( from their Thirty Years War ), my be-poxed equilibrium.
Is itnow so far from that ( the RTE SINGERS with wonderful Dr. Hans Waldemar brought my
Corcoran´s Death- WOLP to that epoch-breaking I.S.C.M. 1979 , also my 1982. )
that my newest ( I won that ) First Prize Outright of the 2013 International Federation For Choral Music , my “stunning ” EIGHT HAIKUS” ?
– Fear of my death ? My dying this e-mailing night ? Of salvation ( but from what ? ) ?
C´mon ?

1.

WORLD-CLASS CHOIR TO PREMIERE Frank Corcoran´s ” 8 Haikus “

which won the 2013 First Prize Outright ( – out of an international field
of 670 submitted choral scores ) of The International Federation For
Choral Music. – Other world-class choirs to follow this.
The University of the Philippines Madrigal Singers was organized in
1963 by National Artist Professor Andrea O. Veneracion. The group is
composed of students, faculty and alumni from the different colleges of
the University of the Philippines (UP). The choir is one of the world’s
most awarded, having consistently won all the top prizes in most of the
world’s prestigious choral competitions: Arezzo and Gorizia in Italy,
Marktoberdorf in Germany, Spittal in Austria, Neuchatel in Switzerland,
Tours in France, Varna in Bulgaria, Debrecen in Hungary, Cantonigros,
Tolosa and Torrevieja in Spain. They hold the distinction of being the
first choir in the world to win the European Grand Prix for Choral
Singing twice (1997 and 2007).

2. September 13. 13.00
National Museum Of Wales, Cardiff, STILL-LIFE WITH GUITAR TRIO
will
premiere Frank Corcoran´s commissioned ” Seven Miniatures For Cardiff” for Flute,
Viola and Guitar.

3. December 1. Hugh Lane Gallery Sunday Noon Concert with the
O´Donnell Percussion , conductor: Richard O´Donnell, Piano: Frank
Corcoran with Frank Corcoran´s MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS for 5
Percussion and Irish Pianist ( 1990 University of Wisconsin commission )
and ” TRAUERFELDER / GOIRT AN BHRÓIN ”
for 4 Percussion ( Hamburg City Culture Minister commission for the

50th. anniversary of the Liberation from Auschwitz. )

Frank Corcoran : THREE HAIKUS FOR THE CARDIFF STILL-LIFE WITH
GUITAR TRIO
( for our September 2013 Cardiff National Museum Concert premiering my newly commissioned SEVEN CUBIST MINIATURES for Guitar , Flute and Viola )

1. Flute, then viola.
Gris´s guitar. Still his brush-strokes.
It´s painted music.

2. Beware now, Cardiff !
“Hang all harpers and pipers!”
Pass round this gay cup!

3. Take now three colours.
Tones sigh, die, fight painted death.
Poised paint is music.

Obscure longings, a good start, yes. But never enough. Start with the real, physical possibilities of the instrument, voice, ensemble. Then comes the tricky bit, the A and B and the C chosen. Only then does form raise its obscure head – how long the work, how thin or expanding or mourning or rumbling the sludge in the basses and tuba, how ascend ? Come down? “Hesitant” versus “direct” is still a very good formula; also its inverse… So
then how´ll we come to the end ? ( How did we begin? – Why ? )
Not once does “For whom ? ” come into this, my story, at least. Later categories later – eg. will it be dramatic ? Eough? A narrative of what ? Unfold / develop / the hallowed rosary-beads
form etc.
Now I am in big, hot trouble, this sun roaring.

Caoin´tú fhéin, a choirc,
Long and cold is The Hen´s Song.
Winter rain her knife.

Driving winter rain
The hen huddling and moaning
Her keen: ” Scél lem díb ! ”

Did it look thus a thousand years ago , the Cimini a purple gold and all trees aghast, a-hush ? – Before the great heat is even awake ? All Haikus still asleep ?
Today is still my empty bucket of water waiting to be filled by what ( free ? Unfree ? ) human decisions? Which wary steps of this knowing I ? A few musical thoughts , wisps of intervallic shapes , a banal cadence or two, vague feelings of wanting to milk this blue golden dawn… add X and Y to cart. Hot voices. It will get hot , hot enough to stop the Birds´ Matutinal Chorus, then more. Hot stones you could bake griddle cake on.
Now it is just lovely.

Holding steady. Dodge and flit from one tree-shadow to the next in The Delight-filled Garden. Keep thinking cooled. – ” All is well” is no bad statement – could change , of course, from one hot moment to the next roaring nineties and more. So what´s the rock in the flow of silly sensations ? O Rock of Ages ! O Mercury-column Climbing ! O friendly shadows and gentle venticello which makes sunlight and dappled shade and thermonuclear solar bomb all bearable, indeed bright. O pasha´s green-cool glass. Keeping thoughts crystal green, the tones waiting, dormant temporarily.

QUASI UNA STORIA 2013 March 17 to May 17 . I could see the 13
strings on my stage – double bass and two celli on the extreme right.
Choirs,sections, colours, soli and tutti, too. ” Storify ” its bits and
pieces; is that introduction just right ? A violin solo ?

2012 was CELLO CONCERTO year – mighty 4 movements – the Slow Movement
has my new singing; the third mov., a Scherzo may be the most brutal I´ve ever
attempted , achieved – great horn interjections in unisoni or only two-voiced
bucina-terror with the percussion. My rhythmic pattern of 5,4,3,4,5
beats in the bar is assymetrically right to control, mesh this violence.
Great cello – up to its dizziest heights

Of course the birth in sound of the Violin Concerto ( of 2011 ) and
the International IFCM First Prize for the choral EIGHT HAIKUS
triggered good internal monologue for the future. What future ? That Manila ( October 5 2013 ) Premiere will lift me and them . FIVE TENORLIEDER still waits. performance – lovely
tessitura and use of my ownb good texts.

Same for 4 PIECES FOR 2 CLARINETS …. courageously thought, shaped.

Same for RHAPSODIC BOWING ; swooning 8 Celli.

You got to be tough to keep going, keep imagining in the vast
loneliness.

NIGHT HAIKUS :

Also this music / Two fierce crows work fast – sharp beaks…. / The cat´s blood congeals.

Now it is evening / They dive down darkly, two beaks /
Flay our young cat´s eyes.

She did not hear them. / Hacking her eyes horribly /
Flying surgeons gouged.

Now gentle evening.
Birds slash, tear, slice our kitten.
Kinetic life dead.