Frank Corcoran

To : JAMIE DETTMER

Jamie, if you do get to starting the garden well-pump ( of course you will ) , it supplies water also for the tap below in the Orto where we have planted new beans , tomatoes et alias plantas plantarum…
These , too, would be most grateful for a slosh, a gargle , a shot of water, a wee drop.

As will I. F.

I prepare , sow-like ( our mother had twelve , free-roving – plus their pink banbheens , over one hundred in their number ) my place of birth; yes, there are real musicians, bowing, blowing divinely, searing, searingly, deliver…. my new CLARINET QUINTET and my new Bass Clarinet Solo, ” A DARK SONG”.

New premieres by Frank Corcoran will be performed in a workshop of his music on 25 November 2011

Frank Corcoran
The event, Meet the Composer!, is a partnership between RTÉ and the Royal Irish Academy of Music and features the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet and clarinetist Fintan Sutton performing two works – Clarinet Quintet and A Dark Song – by the Hamburg-based Irish composer.

Frank Corcoran’s Clarinet Quintet was commissioned by RTÉ for Fintan Sutton and the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet. The composer writes of the work:

‘RTE approached me in 2009 to compose a new work for the RTÉ Vanbrugh String Quartet and Fintan Sutton? I immediately thought of Vienna in September 1787 and Mozart´s Clarinet Quintet – these infinitely artful asymmetries. My three movements will marry the chalumeau sheen of husk and husky clarinet / bass clarinet with the masked sheen of the string quartet.’

A Dark Song is a solo bass clarinet work written this year for Fintan Sutton. With a nod to Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski, Corcoran describes the piece as being born, ‘out of the first five notes of Lutoslawski’s Mi-Parti.’

Both works will be workshopped and premiered in the Katherine Brennan Hall at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin, on 25 November from 4.30pm, and the afternoon will also include contributions from the composer. Admission to the event is free.

Was it flight ? South up to North ? Now my Dublin visit imminent ? Yes. Flight from olives and streaked sky up to shadows, up to a colder dawn, a subtler feeling I have to chase meaning, pilot purpose, poised flight on to the next toe-step. Early riser, be silent but, and, write it down. ( I must not write it out in a verse. No. But see the beauty of the cold morning, the split consciousness in the warm cup of tea. )Up we go. Easy, pilot of this thought. Aisy. When will we arrive? Where? Thoughts are free. Still.

Take- and lift-off well done. Now it´s a few thousand kilometres more north . Here is now also here ( so exactly what´s changed ? ) . I left that light below, that´s what, different sun-angle; also the moon-coordinates and white light. Accidents ? Substance flew here safely, all of it ? Mull over these mid-November, more Northern mullings, quiet and easy. Swing low, sweet cold chariot.

Another pre-dawn dawns. No harm in that. Soon, the annual lift-off, Lazio to Hamburg, Latium ad Hammoniam. ( does “space” exist ? I have mine. Here…. ) Soon my sky will be streaked. Trailing clouds of glory, kerosene. Good work done this now closed year. ( It was not to be pre-viewed, of course; no guarantee at the beginning of any Spring that the music´ll flow, the milk of humanity, human thought-flow, thoughtful. Yet it did.
This now closed year.

The olives are picked. Cold, green oil flows in every mill. Each little olive has something of the grape, of the cherry, of the bean or pea. How many the shades of green, grey, purple blue and black-brown, fat or thin the plant-stone or fruit , how old this mediterranean harvest for Southern Europe. No swallow, I´ll head north over the waiting Alps, this season closed , this chapter closed for this winter. It was a good harvest, that work for chamber orchestra, the little harp solo piece and “A Dark Song” for bass clarinet solo. Well-made is “benfatto”, the annual head back up towards a different Winter. Satisfying this seasonal rhythm from South to North. Put away your medlars and fruit for another year.
Batten down. Stow and cover and slow down the big projects for yet another year of life. November´s coming as we recall all our dead leaves and their rustle. There´ll be new olives next year, new sap rising. Not just yet. Watch your rhythm. Enough for this 2011 autumn, green become ochre and brown. There should be horn-pipe music.

Freely weeping now. The light of other days, of fifty years, each young biography a photographic mystery as the neutrinos ( timeless ? ) stream through that photographic image. Was that ME? They ? The cocked snoot sensing danger in that open book I was about to live and enact in my private ( public ? ) River Of Time, the slightly bent ( laboured? ) smile into the official camera. They all did. We all did. Now it´s only the biographical quickies sketching fifty years lived how? “Became an enthusiastic farmer until a bout of ill health caused me to cut back.” ” We were in Tír na n Óg with our eyes shut.” “In his latter years when home on holidays he smoked a pipe.” ” He is remembered for his laid back style, his gentle nature.” “Having enjoyed good health Thank God apart from having a bunch of stents inserted…. ” Yes, weep on,
handkerchieff, neutrinos.

I am peering now into our June 1961 Group Photograph, the end of our final school year and end of our school time at St. Finian´s. That unhappy mask, the young, cocky mug squared against the infinite openness of my future which is now largely closed. This theme is not banal: I am a creature made of time; I am a person and a time-machine. A composition of temporality. ( Hands up anyone who “understands” this ? ) Across fifty full years now the glint of that preternatural light on our final year class. Six members of the original 49 boys have ” passed away”. Where? The not quite natural ” Priests who taught us”, “Laymen who taught us” and ” Nuns who tended us” ( tender is the night is right ). I leaf through 43 biogs. ” I produce a calender for the homeless”. “Consumer affairs was my most abiding interest”. “I have worked in a malthouse”. “Definitely three great kids top the list”. Much, much too much football, wet and heavy like our College porridge: “His name appeared in the papers after he was buried.” “Massive heart-attack.” “I enjoy reading provided it is non-fiction.” “Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Must explore that light, those neutrinos in our Leaving Certificate Photo. How now, Great Arbiter, Alpha et Omega of all our banal, not banal trajectores ? “Being unaccustomed to th lack of gainful employment”…. “Hip replacement in 1997 due to football wear and tear”.

This is a composer writing : to I and to Me and certainly to You Of Little Faith, faith. My writhing themes , of course, conquer rhythm and elegance and form and, yes, high, high excellence and polish and musical spit and instrumental brilliance and balance and vocal absurdities and orchestral quotations and architectural, heard sounding forms. Again and again and again….