Frank Corcoran

Mine taught me great Horace badly, stupidly, morosely, a bad taste in the Lazio mouth.
He meant: ” More tensile than steel, tauter than tight wire my odes and stunts and cunts. ” He sang rightly: ” Copper-fasten the now in tones, rhythms, phrased stetements and sobs and shrieks and atonal sighs. Breath ! ” Maith thú , a fhile” MIGHTY!

Yes, it was 2006 and the Zagreb String Quartet premiered the Third String Quartet on magical Vis island, waters lapping ( my darling Caleno Quartet did it two years later among the grave sculptures of the Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin – see my writhings….. )
Yes, it was a high Croatian Shakespearean summer, 2004. The Irish Arts Council had commissioned ” Quasi Un Concerto ” for the Zagreb premier by the ( excellent ) new music chamber orchestra, CANTUS, conductor: Beroslaw Sipus. We put it together, Sipus and Corcoran, – GREAT Croatian musicologist, Professor Niksa Gligo was in on the fun!, on that lovely, lovely Dalmatian island. It was a hot, balmy, Shakespearean night at Venetian Vis Castle, a sweltering milky swell under their full moon. Almost a concerto for all five wind and piano and percussion and five strings. Fun and runs and metric and aleatoric passages . How Istrian time runs and ravages and roams and ravishes.

December 10 2011 :

North German Radio Hamburg:

Frank Corcoran´s Radiophonic Analysis of Gustav Mahler´s SECOND SYMPHONY.

What´s this about pre-, dawn and post- ? The light dappling these fair hill of the Ciminis? A neutrino is streaking down from CERN to Gran Sasso to race the “bright ring of day”, ochre and buttered gold painting just what outside my cloistered window?
This October night was still balm, still is balmy; bits of sticky sleep stubborn but willing. I ease into my very own October 3. No “Whence, Where, Why, Whither” questions are awake. It is now.

November 25 . 2011

Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin:
Irish Radio RTE premieres two new Frank Corcoran compositions:

CLARINET QUINTET ( Vanbrugh String Quartet and Fintan Sutton, Clarinet )

A DARK SONG ( Fintan Sutton, Bassclarinet Solo )

“The sea! Oh! The sea!” Now lovely late September washing or laving or lapping at the deep heart´s core ( see my newest work for solo harp ) , synaesthesia gone all Turnerish, dawns and evenings mirroring more than these fingers can. Eye cannot see nor ear hear nor vice versa at that Tirrhenian coast where Etruscans and Greeks and Parthians and Romans and Goths and Lombards and Huns and Franks all were suitably cowed and dandled and lulled and laid at this sand-and-sea line, like as the waves move toward the pebbled shore ( or its roar , if there is a storm out at Elba or Giglio Island ). Kinetic art ?Maybe Debussy´s La Mer-ish art was a swindle, eh ?

The September question before the lovely dawn fingers me, Rosy: Linked In to WHAT ? To whom ? And how differs our scurrying fingers´ e-linking from good old “communication” , I ask
tired them ? Whom do they “reach” ? Outreach ? Why do they wish to reach out ? eg. On the vast panorama of inter-human ( yes, this niggling preposition; precisely this ) “two become one” ( one flesh ? one virtual reality ? one confluence of radio-signals ? one mind and heart and song ? ) miracles, where and how profound is my Linking In ? Who is out there in that pre-dawn dawn caring for me or my rosy fingers ? ´Course my lovely linked in communicants could ask me the same electronic question, even now ? Link me in, Scottie. Call me ” in” . I´m in! In what my matins musing ? My early e-post, my post-Morse, post bush-telegraph, post smoke signals from two unwashed Red Indians´ponies´ blankets´palaver ? – A marriage of fine, interlinking minds, e-snailers all; eye can not see nor ear hear the inter-galactic whir of souls linked in a new ghostly or ghastly dance. Let´s do it! Link in or die! Why? Monads bow out and smile wearily. Linking. Missing. Keep on. Whirr! Hang on! The noosphere´s awash with e-whoosh as we ride a photon linking us. Linking us whither? Where two or three are gathered together, are linked in, in my name…. Tones or persons?

Mother cat plus four kittens are now examining : ”
My time in Hamburg ? Deepest provincial. Deepest woe. Deep or dreep, I drowned in
that ” Hamburg Musikhochschule ” ´s self-castrating self perpetuation. No future dreamable ?
All four kittens AGREE. LEAERSHIP WAS SHIT:

Apparently the heat will break tomorrow. Will the four kittens notice? Any change in their bounce and delight and their sense of play, hunger, thirst ? Apparently they do not have any concept of a ” concept” . No idea of an idea. Not an iota of the artistic in their gay artfullness. Schrödinger´s Cat was bliss itself, unaware of the theory of theory, of game-theory. Sheer bliss to be alive and feline. No worry about how to control the tones ( and not the other way around) ! Or –
the composer´s constant, distracting red herring – worry about the next or only or first performance of ” VARIATIONS ON MYSELF”….

So if we take the new piece, ” A DARK SONG” for Solo Bassclarinet ( premiere : Fintan Sutton , November 25 at the Royal Irish Academy of Music together with the Vanbrugh´s premiere – again with Fintan Sutton- of the RTE commissioned CLARINET QUINTET ) : what on earth is this short solo work about or ” about” ? My writhings? The composer´s breakfast ? The kittens´song ? ( They can´t. No ) Is it about shaping a lovely line ? Melodic curves ? Multicoloured intervals ? Musical ” ideas” ? Or what ? My free play ( nothing´s free nowadays … ) ?
With those few intervals ? And their derived ideas, eh ?