Frank Corcoran

Irish Composer
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MONDAY MARCH 3, 2025 ,7.30 James Joyce Centre Dublin FRANK CORCORAN / JAMES JOYCE

Posted on February 10, 2025 By

MONDAY MARCH 3 . 7.30 James Joyce Centre Dublin FRANK CORCORAN / JAMES JOYCE

Frank Corcoran: Three Pieces for Guitar (1975)

Frank Corcoran: Joycespeak Musik (for tape, 1995)

Frank Corcoran: Seven Points about Joyce as an irish Composer (a text narrated by Frank Corcoran)

Frank Corcoran:Joyceana (2015, for cello)

Frank Corcoran:Snap-shot (2010, for cello)

Georg Hajdu: To Market Music (2024, for guitar & narrator; text by Frank Corcoran) Frank Corcoran narrating. Irish Premiere.

Frank Corcoran: ‘Agnus Dei’ from Quasi Una Missa (1999, for tape)

Benjamin Dwyer: Sing the Word Only (2024, for guitar & narrator; text by Frank Corcoran) Frank Corcoran narrating. Irish Premiere.

Benjamin Dwyer: Guitar

Paul Grennan: Cello

Frank Corcoran: Narration

James Joyce Centre: 7.30pm, Monday 3 March 2025. 

Free entry, with complimentary wine/soft drinks afterwards.

Sundays at Noon present: Music from Mythic Ireland March 2nd 2025- Frank Corcoran

Posted on February 10, 2025 By

Date and time
Sunday, March 2 · 12 – 1pm GMT. Doors at 11:59am
Location
Hugh Lane Gallery

Parnell Square North D01 F2X9 Dublin 1
Show map
About this event
Sundays at Noon cocert series present:



MUSIC AND WORDS FROM MYTHIC IRELAND – Frank Corcoran


Frank Corcoran : recitation, Early Irish Lyrics, piano

RIAM Percussion Ensemble , conductor Richard O’´Donnell.



Programme

Frank Corcoran : TRAUERFELDER/ GOIRT AN BHRÓIN
Frank Corcoran : MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS


Frank Corcoran

“I came late to art music; childhood soundscapes live on. The best work with imagination/intellect must be exorcistic-laudatory-excavatory. I am a passionate believer in “Irish” dream-landscape, two languages, polyphony of history, not ideology or programme. No Irish composer has yet dealt adequately with our past. The way forward – newest forms and technique (for me especially macro-counterpoint) – is the way back to deepest human experience.”

Born in Borrisokane, County Tipperary, Corcoran studied at Dublin, Maynooth (1961–4), Rome (1967–9) and Berlin (1969–71), where he was a pupil of Boris Blacher. He was a music inspector for the Irish government Department of Education from 1971 to 1979, after which he took up a composer fellowship from the Berlin Künstlerprogramm (1980–1). He has taught in Berlin (1981), Stuttgart (1982) and Hamburg, where he has been professor of composition and theory in the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst (1983–2008). He was a visiting professor and Fulbright scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the U.S. in 1989-90 and has been a guest lecturer at CalArts, Harvard University, Princeton University, Boston College, New York University, and Indiana University.

Corcoran has been a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of creative artists, since its inception in 1983. He was the first Irish composer to have had a symphony premiered in Vienna (1st Symphony, Symphonies of Symphonies of Wind, in 1981).

Corcoran lives in Germany and Italy.

Frank Corcoran at 80: Retrospective Concert 6 December 2024 19:00 Fanny Hensel-Saal, Hochschule fuer Musik und Theater Hamburg

Posted on February 10, 2025 By

Retrospective concert marking Irish composer Frank Corcoran’s 80th birthday featuring a new work commissioned by Hochschule fu?r Musik und Theater (HfMT) – Hamburg.

Performed by students of the university, David Stromberg (Cello) and Bernhard Fograscher (Piano), conducted by Cornelia Monske.

Order of the evening:

19.00 Welcome and introduction at Fanny Hensel Saal

20.00 Portrait concert in multifunctional studio (see below)

21.00 Reception with the Irish Consul General

21.40 Conclusion: “QUASI UNA MISSA” for electronics (1999 WDR commission. 2000 Swedish EMS Prize), Multifunctional Studio

Programme
Frank Corcoran – 9 LOOKS AT ” Pierrot “, for flute, clarinet, piano, violoncello, violin (2022 NEW MUSIC DUBLIN)

Frank Corcoran – ICE-ETCHINGS, for solo cello (1990 Rome Festival)

Frank Corcoran – TRAUERFELDER, for 5 percussionists (1995 commissioned by Dr. Christine Weiss, Senator of Culture Hamburg)

Frank Corcoran – CAOINES AND CANONS

Frank Corcoran – SMITHEREENS AND SHARDS (2024 HfMT Hamburg)

Tickets
Free admission.

Venue
Fanny Hensel-Saal, Hochschule fu?r Musik und Theater Hamburg
Harvestehuder Weg 12 20148 Hamburg
Hamburg
Germany

Friday 29th April  2022 Frank Corcoran

Posted on February 10, 2025 By

12.30pm

Kevin Barry Recital Room

Hard Rain SoloistEnsemble 

Sinead Hayes, Conductor 

Joanne Quigley-McParland, violin 

David McCann, Cello 

Aisling Agnew, Flutes 

Sarah Watts, Clarinets 

Daniel Browell, Piano 

Frank Corcoran Nine Looks at Pierrot 

Rhona Clarke Non-stop 

Frank Corcoran Melodies and Mobiles 

Elaine Agnew Green 

Frank Corcoran Caoines and Canons (World Premiere) 

Great minds think alike. Hard Rain commissioned a new work from Irish composer Frank Corcoran for their new 2021/22 season, only to discover that New Music Dublin had done the same. It felt appropriate, therefore, that HardRain’s performance at NMD this year should celebrate these two new works and include Corcoran’s Nine Looks at Pierrot, a work that features on the ensemble’s recent album release.

POST VENEZIA POST

Posted on June 12, 2012 By

April 10 2012. High Point University .
J.W.Turner, solo cello:

Frank Corcoran:
SUITE FOR VIOLONCELLO 1972

“This is a set of 6 miniatures that , with their profoundly lyrical moments punctuated by terse chords or expectant pauses, reflect the same Hibernian poesy and elusive fragments that characterize Frank Corcoran´s prose. See his blog, for example, in the article ” Just To Prove That I Am Not Yet Paralysed” he writes: “Treachery is ubiquitous in language, in memory, in blogging perception, whether the words and tones are self-referential or only half so. My Cello Solo Suite I wrote in 1972. Did I ? Sure, it was influenced by Bach, Kodaly, Henze, that over-blown Reger. No art without the past… ” “

WHISHT ! QUIET YOUR ” QUASIS” !

Posted on February 13, 2009 By

I composed them . Yes:

“Quasi Una Missa” ( 1999 W.D.R. Commission. electro-acoustic . 2002 Swedish EMS Prize )

“Quasi Un Pizzicato” ( Wireworks Ensemble commission 2004. Soprano , Speaker and Ensemble)

“Quasi Un Basso ” ( 2005 . Solo Bass. Allan von Shenkel . Also featured in Hungarian Radio Bartók´s
2006 Bartok Celebrations, Budapest )

” Quasi Variations on A MHAIRIN DE BARRA ” ( Irish Radio commission 2005. Constantin Zanidache,
Solo Viola, recorded it for CD “Composers´Art Label ” LC 00581 )

“Quasi Un Canto” for Large Orchestra ( 2005 World Music Days, Zagreb Philharmonic )

“Quasi Un Lamento” for Chamber Orchestra and accordeon ( N.S.O.I. Dublin 2005 )

“Quasi Una Visione ” for Ensemble Modern ( RTÉ´s “Living Music Festival” , Dublin, 2005 )

“Quasi Un Concerto ” for “CANTUS” Ensemble Zagreb ( Commissioned 2003 from Irish Arts Council . Island of Vis and Zagreb . )

“Quasi Una Fuga” for 18 Strings ( commissioned by Irish Chamber Orchestra, 2007 MBNA Festival )

” Quasi Un Preludio” for Solo Violin ( 2008 )

” Quasi Un Duo ” for Piano and Double-bass ( Duo Moderno 2008 premiere in Bucharest )

QUASI UN LAMENTO ( for my N.S.O.I Concert in Dublin, March 8, 2005 )

Posted on February 11, 2009 By

If Orpheus had had three saxophones to hand, he also would have availed of their power to mourn. Or an accordeon. Still, it´s important to get rid of the bleating, the whine the old cow died on. Music can lament alright, but it has to get rid of the merely private. While it also affirms, it is bewailing not so much any particular “Dies Irae” as the very passing of the very time of which music is made. Even without the double reeds or any particular register the composer´s plangency begins its unsettling work. In Vasari´s Corridor in the Uffizzi is a fine Roman copy of the Greek original ” Marsyas Being Flayed Alive”. Apollo, a string-player, takes his awful revenge on the poor wind-player. My one-movement work, ” Quasi Un Lamento”, my sound-sculpture, screams , moans; the seven wind-instruments easily overpower anything the four strings can sob; my piano and percussion add a third element of violence. The accordeon at the close can whimper its Requiem “Kyrie”, five tones, Doh-Re-Mi-Fa-Mi, a fundamental archetype of Western music.

And QUASI UN CANTO for Full Orchestra, then. “I don´t like music but I love to sing!” was Leonard Bernstein´s self-protecting spakes on and off television. In “Quasi Un Canto” a prelude ( it doubles at the end as a postlude also ) frames the orchestral song as it unfolds its 5 tones, A,B,C sharp, C,D and E flat in instrumental groups of three ( three trumpets, three flutes, etc. ) and later in groups of four ( celli divisi, etc. )
Hear my song, sardonic, splintered, quasi unisono then. This branches outlegato or blocked or bursting its way through musical space. Harp, piano and a panoply of percussion ( including bodhrá¡n and clashed cymbals to be lowered in a bath-tub of water ) mediate between the ideas which are really one idea. Vertical is horizontal is oblique. This is song, the full throat.

HURRY UP NOW, PLEASE ! IT´S TIME!

Posted on February 8, 2009 By

It is time to dust down my choral score of ” MEDIEVAL IRISH EPIGRAMMES” which the RTE Singers under Hans Waldemar Rosen premiered in the then Dublin in 1975. ( It was played then at the 1978 International Composers´Rostrum in Paris 1978 )
These nine Haiku-like miniatures are a window on Iron Age Ireland of those first five centuries A.D.
Stirring singing.

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