Frank Corcoran

It pisses moonlight

Through ruined rotten rafters

The wind moans my end

What’s it like to be Frank Corcoran?

1. How and when did you get interested in composing?

A seven year old lad: my first piano-lesson with kindly Sister Francis at Borrisokane Convent. I wanted to re-compose sections of The Rosebud Waltz. I was then studying intensively — and intensely.

2. Is composing your ‘day job’ or do you do something else as well?

I am a music professor at Hamburg’s Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater (‘day-job’). However, when the Cúchulainn warp-spasms get me with a new composition, I work day and night also at that.

3. Where do you mostly get your ideas?

Triggers of the past: poor Mad Sweeney (turned biography and breakfast — of cress and pure, cold water — into art); a poem (Rosenstock, John Barth, medieval Irish lyrics, etc.); a scaffolding (rondo as rosary-beads, etc.); an obscure form (e.g. exploding tonal shell or mine, etc.); out of the living air…

4. What are you working on at the moment?

Tradurre-Tradire: electro-acoustic with many voices, commission of Deutschland Radio Berlin for 2 July 2004 premiere. Hope to begin a strange new work for orchestra straight after that. Obscure longings…

5. Describe your typical working day.

As with Brahms and other Viennese, the best ideas come very early, by first light; are worked and whittled and soldered at any available hour of the not long enough day.

6. What is it like hearing a new piece played for the first time?

My Platonic Form becomes Sounding Flesh. No (even excellent) performance ever is that form. But it is my sounding embodiment of it. Like so many other (I do hope) composers, I must also respect good musicians’ wishes: a nuance here, a wood-wind phrasing there. The past greats were always humble about having occasionally to watch the weight of their orchestration. Me too…

7. What has been the highlight of your career so far?

The premiere in Vienna (luminous 1981) of my Symphonies of Symphonies of Wind (O.R.F. Symphony Orchestra — glorious wind-sounds! — conducted by Lothar Zagrosek).

8. What has been the lowlight of your career so far?

When the then RTÉ Symphony Orchestra (it wasn’t their fault; the repeat performance was great!) premiered my Two Meditations on [texts by] John Barth in, I think, 1973-ish in the Francis Xavier Hall, Dublin. My work for speaker and orchestra sounded (Oh technology!) as a work for orchestra without speaker. Next time, I was on the alert.

9. What is your greatest ambition?

To keep the courage up; moral, artistic courage. To go out on the edge. With new work in different genres, e.g. my present, new Tradurre-Tradire, ‘How to translate her scream’.

10. Which musician in history do you most admire and why?

Of the many candidates, today it’s Schubert. In his death-year, he knew how he would syphilitically end. He continued to the last to produce high masterpieces, music of the highest order and, I’ll say it again, courage.

11. Which present-day musician do you most admire and why?

Ligeti, my former colleague at Hamburg, is still living. Late Boulez: works, e.g. Sur Incises, continue to stretch him and us. Lutoslawsky up to the end, a high heroism.

12. Which period of history would you most like to have lived in and why?

I’ll stay put in today. In spite of the most vicious neo-con anti-art winds known to man.

13. What is the best thing about being a composer?

I can’t let up till a new work, being born, gives me relief from the creative, itching obsession.

14. What is the worst thing about being a composer?

My fellow-Irish have not yet (will they?) accepted music as an art on a par with Irish literature, Irish painting, etc. I include fellow Irish artists — especially my Aosdána colleagues — intellectuals, cultural philosophers, pub-poets and princes, powerful potentates. Is this fear of Irish art-music, Irish composers, genetic? Education-induced? Very strange for a ‘European’ nation. Very.

15. If you weren’t a composer, what other career might you have chosen?

A thinker, tinker, philosopher, theological traveller.

16. What is your concept of heaven?

Please email Dante…

17. What is your concept of hell?

Please email Richard Perle and other U.S. neo-con think-tankers.

18. What is your favourite food?

Cannelloni cooked in any village in Umbria, Lazio or Chianti. Also well-composed Irish Stew (where’ll I get it?).

19. If someone gave you three months off with unlimited travel and living expenses, what would you do?

Month 1: Skellig Rock, composer´s camp for one. Month 2: An Umbrian village I’m keeping nameless, cannelloni, and accompaniments to lave the soul’s ear. Month 3: Mount Athos with paper and pencil (shouldn’t be too hot or waterless).

20. If you could have one thing in the world that would really help you as a composer, what would it be?

Change places — for a pleasant while — with eighteenth-century Joseph Haydn. I, too, would enjoy his Duke’s orchestral generosity.

features on irish music:
features home

what’s new – irish composers – shop – search the library – education & outreach
calendar – features on irish music – opportunities – useful addresses – about us
press – links – send page – contact – subscribe – site map – home
registered composers section

2004

Tradurre-Tradire

CORCORAN, Frank

00:24:01

Beschreibung

Das Wortspiel und Sprichwort „Tradurre – Tradire“ will sagen: „Übersetzen bedeutet Verrat, Betrug.“ Frank Corcoran setzt sich in seiner Komposition ganz wörtlich mit diesem Grundproblem jeder sprachlichen Übersetzung und Vermittlung auseinander. Anhand eines kurzen gälischen Gedichts des irischen Poeten Gabriel Rosenstock und dessen englischer und deutscher Übersetzung schafft Corcoran in seinem elektroakustischen Werk ein Beziehungsgeflecht der Bedeutungen und Missdeutungen. Die polyphone Klangkomposition für vier Stimmen führt den aufmerksamen Hörer in philosophische Abgründe.

Tags

Wortwanderung, stille Post, scream

KUNSTMUSIK NR. 4 World Edition Cologne

www.kunstmusik.org

Essays by : Frank Corcoran, Clarence Barlow, Brian Ferneyhough, Mauricio Kagel et al.

Narcissus is THE patron saint of all artists.
( I love, now in this clear mythic water, mythic me. But who then is , then, me, is myself ? Who would be this” I ” ? Then why do ” I ” love ” me ” as self-perceived in “my” mind´s very “I” ? )
Not true.
Great art, the very highest composed music does travel much farther; it aims at timeless constructs, for atemporality, wrought tougher than steel. The best climb farther and they then kick away their autobiographical ladder, swinging serene from that higher arboreal position.
“Me” – sodden art is never enough. High art, the best, conceals with Horace ALL of its author´s origins: ” I love me, Narcissus, me kisses I, I – WHO? – these watery lips”.

Frank Corcoran was a member of theI nternational Jury for

VALENTINO BUCCHI PRIZE ROME

WORLD MUSIC DAYS ZAGREB

CITTA` DI TRIESTE ( several times )

Frank Corcoran broadcasts on new music for:

Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Raidió ´Eireann, RAI
Roma, Lyric Fm, Nat. Public Radio, Radio Bremen, H.R., Bavarian Radio, W.F.M.R., W.D.R., Sender Freies Berlin, RIAS, Deutschlandfunk, Deutschland Radio, etc. etc.

They say hope is the last to die.
Wrong. It´s FORM. I have to create form in my new work. How
the different parts relate to the whole thing – and to each other. And I have to re-think this anew each time; none of your neo-this or -that with a pre-cooked formula. Good form, the best, has to feel right, must proclaim that its today is the first day of Creation. Must grow . Out of the opening music, the opening statement, idea, shape, colour, motif. Weak form is weak art.

Venetian Meditations on ‘Ochhi Sereni’
(2007) Dialog Bewegung Gambe
Besetzung: Solo
Musik: Frank Corcoran, Komp. / Gambe Solo
Dauer: 15 Minuten
Premiere: Musikhochschule Trossingen

CELLO CONCERTO 2014
VARIATIONS ON MYSELF for Chamber Orchestra 2013
IN THE DEEP HEART´S CORE for Solo Harp 2013
EIGHT HAIKUS ( S.S.A.A.T.T.B.B. ) 2013
4 PIECES FOR TWO CLARINETS 2013
5 TENORLIEDER 2012
CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA 2012
TWO UNHOLY HAIKUS ( S.A.T.B. ) 2012
A DARK SONG ( Solo Bassclarinet ) 2011
CLARINET QUINTET 2011
SONGS OF TERROR AND LOVE ( Baryton/ Pierrot Quintet ) ”
FOUR ORCHESTRAL LIEDER 2010
QUASI UNA FUGA revised version for Large Orch. 2009
NINE ASPECTS for Solo Violin and Large Choir 2008
QUASI UNA FUGA for 18 Solo Strings 2007