Frank Corcoran

CORRECTION :

The first of three Concertzender broadcasts of
Frank Corcoran´s VIOLIN CONCERTO is on:

Friday 1. February 2013

Dutch Radio Concertzender on February 8 and
10 and 12 . 2013. – three broadcasts
Frank Corcoran VIOLIN CONCERTO
( N.S.O. Dublin, Conductor Christopher Warren-Green, Soloist Alan Smale ) of Nov. 2. 2012

The dead composer
Cold, he hears a choir murder
His lovely phrases.

Don´t piss on the graves!
I entered the choir´s warm church
Fluffy snow falling

Leaping and sliding
The choir´s lines like woven threads
Outside it´s icy

In 1965 Witold Lutoslawsky wrote down the following passage which summarised his approach to the then avant-garde:

‘What is my attitude toward the avant-garde? First of all, I have a fellow-feeling for it. However, in spite of the basic role the avant-garde plays in the development of every art, I also see something sad about it. There is always a tinge of resignation in the stance of an avant-gardist, since it consists of expecting elements that are of no real importance in themselves to perform the function of a finished work of art. ”

Yes, woven words. Grave words.

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What desperate composer in these nights of snow and ice wouldn´t sell her grannie for a performance ? ( – ” My kingdom for an orchestral performance, a festival appearance, a two weeks´ tour with wild adulation ” kind-of-thing – )
Consider, my icy soul: LESSON ONE – ” My music isn´t bad, only badly played ” ( approximately Schoenberg ) . LESSON TWO – Baking and selling the cake are two distinct skills to be kept permanently separate. Otherwise…
LESSON THREE – consider the greats, sleeping in their snowed-over tumuli; consider the desperate desperation of a Hugo Wolf, an Anton Webern, a Berndt Alois Zimmermann or a Bela Bartók in New York City Hospital . There are others. LESSON FOUR – getting that commission guarantees nothing.
When will this snow stop ?

I reel. I rawl.
Lech Majewski´s film: ” THE MILL AND THE CROSS” , visually gorgeous, enormous, newest technology and 3D an´all and this extraordinary Kattowice painter/ poet/ film maker/ composer ( YES ! Yes.- Blessed are the self-styled…. ) extraordinary; eccentric is not the word . Let Majewski speak.
” Transporting the painting ( i.e. Peter Breughel The Elder´s 1564 Nicolas Jonghelinck´s painted commission, ” Crucifixion”, into such a different medium, however, took patience: The result is a mix of old-fashioned craftsmanship and the latest in digital film-making technology. Costumes were hand-sewn by Polish seamstresses and dyed with tints made from boiled onions, beetroots and apples, as they would have been in Bruegel’s day; the “right” color black was achieved by burning a candle against a pane of glass, rather than relying on computers to recreate the exact hue. ”
Majewski himself had to take up Bruegel’s brush and complete a partially-visible tree in the top-left corner of the painting to extend the field of vision for the camera to pan across.
– So: is Majewski´s “DIE MÜHLE UND DAS KREUZ” , then, close to Adorno´s “Kitsch ? Yes ! Too close ?
Yes! it is too close . Hmmm. Pity. – Behind its gorgeous ( Polish, ” Catholic” ) camera´s masterfull ecstasy , taking its slow, visual pleasure in torture, in peasants´ over-lovely ( – operatic ? perhaps even Visconti? )
costumes , crimson Spanish Inquisition murderers´ horses, Majewski´s Catholic cameras ( plural , polyphonic, many layers ) , I am afraid, wallow ( – is he aware of this ? – surely not? ) in – a great sin, an aesthetic sin, Polish Jesuits would nod – TAKING VISUAL PLEASURE, my son ( ” How many times! ? ” ) in ” violent sacrifice ” theology, in “Electric Chair Theology” , in Sacred Sadism Theology .
Behind his ( laudable ) silences and lush pannings and delightfully, deliberately slow tempi is an attitude towards holy pornography ( – Miles better , I grant you , than the truly awful Mel Gibson ) which thus sadly betrays his great filmic mastery. Unholy. Verily. That aesthetic of his message nukes thus his seen, felt, dreamed, filmic massage of me, the composing viewer. Pity. Beware Kitsch in all its ( lush, even lovely ) meretricious forms. Even in music. Especially in music.

Yes, art can certainly be defined. but watch the context, the cultural and historical period. Is it art or arts ? Which art ?
See also Horace, the Roman poet, his ” sheen and seen! ” .
See also the crafts . etc. Clear the decks.
Or are we attempting a definition now and here? In this 21 st. c. ?
Then where exactly we do the defining is also important. eg. Take Ireland and contemporary , composed music. Alas, I do insist that in Ireland still today there is hardly a concept, any attempted definition, a way of defining Irish musical works – composed by real Irish composers – as art, indeed as Irish art and on a level with eg. Irish poetry, film, painting etc. ( Sure I was going on about this decades ago )
So what are the causes of this curious prejudice, this Irish exclusion of Irish composed music from Irish arts, I wonder ? Dogma ? Lazy thinking? Could it be the general lack of experiencing New Irish Music played, sung, sounding , is that it ? Mull this over.
There have in the past been many definitions of art, of musical composition. It´s also worth reflecting on some of the things we still today may define composing Irish music as: it is ” sicut fumus” , like smoke, ethereal. It is a temporal art, indeed THE time-art par excellence. Time-bending, stretching, sculpting, stitching, overlapping, deluding, defying, conquering. ( See Gabriel Rosenstock´s ” Buailim bob ar bhás! ” ) Composing is mythic hope, it´s utopian, fighting the good fight. If “cinis aequat omnia”, still a Frank Corcoran composition will yell and shout and erect its own resistance to John Montague´s ” Sea of history / Upon which we all turn / Turn and thrash / And disappear… ” Music keens, protests, praises a fightin´ transcendence which potentially lives beyond the grave.
Certainly, music can be defined. Art can be defined. Irish contemporary music fights its corner , defining Ireland, Irish art, Irish artists.

FRANK CORCORAN

Water in my jar
Becomes January ice
Snap! Thud! The jar breaks !

In the cold New Year
The water jug froze so thick
That it exploded

Icicles hang from
My cold January jug
It´s now cracked across

He´ll earn more than a few lines from my composer´s wrist.ing Watch out this magic Lutoslawsky Week Writhing . Lutoslawsky did it. – Waited. ” Heard” his ” Polish ” composer´s orchestral rhythms, imagined / frozen instrumental snatches and commentaries and arguments and dialogues etc. , the world´s musical sighs, great preparations for great orchestral tuttis ( Well, yes, the Second Symphony smacks the world´s gob; and that Third is supreme. His, at his mortal , cancer – end
Fourth Symphony is quite new. – Is it born again! ? Certainly ! Heard anew. )

He was, Lutoslawsky . He reinvented the wheel. Of melody and of harmony and, above all , of course , with his orchestral rhythm. His rhythms, ” aleatoric ” .
A lovely man, fear an-uasal, I trembled and yet shook his hand at that mythic 1977 Warszawska Jesien. Molaim!
My Irish composer´s body still gets a depth-charge from his Second Symphony ( – It´s basically a fortissimo Prepare – Charge ! ! ! , I was just back from Boris Blacher in West Berlin and it was the old RTE Studios in Henry Street… , I don´t any more know, ” LIVRES ” , its outrageous form, is even stronger, even more anti – Deutsch , more ” anti-Brahms ” ( – he whom I love … See my Feb. 9. 2013 big NDR Klassik ” FRANK CORCORAN´S great radiophonic analysis of Brahms 2. plus , then, Frank Corcoran´s
2012 Violin Concerto , Irish N S O / Alan Smale , conducted by Christopher Warren-Green ) . Why? e.g. – Many times have I programmed Lutoslawsky´s frozen-sad / mourn – caoine MUSIQUE FUNEBRE ( – only his severe strings, grave canons as great as Stravinsky´s ) with my Corcoran orchestral caoines. The beginning of his THIRD SYMPHONY and that opening ( and his WOW ! ) close of his FOURTH SYMPHONY give me back now all my hope, my Irish composer´s
strength. MY hope: In symphonic form. In the great Polish composer´s colour-imagination. Molaim Lutoslawsky. Caoinim Lutoslawsky ! Weep !