Frank Corcoran

It´s still shy February. Time to polish the frozen pen: well, what about ” THE FOUR SEASONS” or some such ? Let´s scribble un po´ :

1. The lark is larking
Sparkling quavers and crotchets
Its whole life-long day.

2. As the day is long / A hungry crow´s beak open /
Caws : ” I am a crow !”

3. For the womb the seed
Sighs. For light the eternal
Dark Polar midday.

4. New Year born today.
Birthday gay. But I am aged
Many years new-born.

Stop hinging! Unhinged ? ! Fact was (and still is ) that the 2010
„ FOUR ORCHESTRAL PRAYERS „ for Soprano and Orchestra ( in January 2010 , N.S.O. /
Colman Pearce, Soprano : Chloe Hinton ) with sublime God-texts by eg. Our Old Tipperary Neo-Platonist, Johannes Scotus Erigena – hey, you´d really prefer this to our post-colonial discourse ? – Okay, “my” Eriugena sank without a trace in Dublin, dear, dear
Unesco Literature Capital City.
I believed that I did continue the goodly fight; it was thru fire and dungeon. – Believe in what ?
Long after all was gone up the Killavalla chimney, ah, I did still yearn for it. Something Beyond ; desperately some Justice, somehow beyant. Mythic ironing out. Somehow. Beyond the stars. Kissing tears away from all blinded cheeks, all those just victims. Shure I did ! Beyond cosmic indifference, in a yet Friendly Albeit Just Indifference.
Believed? And in music ? I had to compose. To bend those poor tones to my will, yerra, a mere child.

Turn over, poor, dead Edward Said : – but that our little land could carry the (deeply, mythically )
anti-symphonic colonist / Wild Colonial Boy polarity over well into the astonished present…. Maybe that´s why we´ve not got further
with Irish composed music ?
Suppose you wanted to compose this Corcoran Haiku for Doublebass and Jam-Jar ? – Just suppose:
” The priest dried her hair
Black desire and beautiful
Electricity”.
Well ? No good going back to a Slow Air , to imperial Elgar, to Viennese espressivo Webern or our own troppo Schumannesque
´O Riada. You´ve got to invent . Your own composition. Make it new. Hark, the past masters, okay. Now it´s your turn with line ´n colour ´n rate-of-flow ´n bend ´n astonish ´n pacify ´n seek musical closure , your jam-jar suitably stroked, bowed, smashed or spat into ( all, in their own compositional context , thinkable ). Well ?

Irish composers of my generation had a hard slog in the seventies. I remember them well.
” Irish” did not fit seamlessly to ” Composer”. ( ” What ? You´re an Irish WHAT ?!” ) . Nor “cumadóir” to ” na h´Eireann “. Polite incomprehension. Total disbelief.
Is there any greater understanding nowadays that composed music is , well, art ? That a musical work composed by an Irish composer is, well, Irish art ?
No. Behind the seeming progress, there is not understanding of how and why and who bind sounds together in , yes, well, a musical syntax to compose sounding brass or
tinkling cymbal. Serious ( or hilarious ) art-music. Crafted time and embroidered lines, masses, metaphors, sonorous dolmens. No. Where should help in “understanding” Irish composed music come from ? From where ?

23 April 2006 National Gallery Of Ireland

CONCORDE Ensemble: Frank Corcoran´s

“The Light Gleams” as part of BEYOND BECKETT 2006.

“Music is the idea itself,
Unaware of the world of phenomena,
existing ideally outside the universe. ”

( …. Samuel Beckett )

It was, well, 2003. The ( Irish ) Arts Council commissioned ” my brand-new : QUASI UN CONCERTINO” for the Croatian chamber orchestra in Zagreb, “Cantus ” Ensemble . ( My native Tiobrad ´Arainn held its hilarious breath . It had to. Which history had prepared whom for that ( Croatian ) WHAT of me, Tipperary´s illustrious son, 1944 till, I´d reckon, 1956, eh, melodious son ? ) .
Bero Sipus, Chief Conductor of the Zagreb Opera and of the Philharmonic Concerts and, too, of Cantus New Music ( they´d heard of me …. ) , was no daw.
So 2004, was it, on that idyllic island of Shakespeare´s Corcyla, down at the old ( – yes, Venetian ) harbour, he premiered my ” Quasi Un Concertino ” for “his” 12 superb ” Cantus” players. Poised their wood-wind and hot, sweaty, his world-class hornist, piano, percussion plus that five Corcoran string quintet; fifteen and a half hefty minutes of WHAT ? Frank Corcoran´s ” QUASI UN CONCERTINO” for 12 Players is world-music, its narrative brilliance, my lonely furrow, the depth of its sonorous imagination: dense violence / quiet piano plus percussion interlude, aleatoric seeking of “Cantus” ´s solo Cello / Flute / Percussion, that probing, my wind-down of the musical argument . Well, Tipperary ? No ! Croatian ? No !

May 21. 2011
NDR KULTUR NORDDEUTSCHERRUNDFUNK ” Prisma Musik”

Frank Corcoran´s radiophonic analysis of Mahler´s 1. Symphony.

Saturday 22. January 2011 on the kindly radio :

NDR KULTUR . On “Prisma Musik ” 20.00 : Frank Corcoran and
Brahms´3. Symphony. Also Frank Corcoran´s ” QUASI UNA VISIONE” ( 2005 Dublin Festival commission ) with Ensemble Modern / Sian Edwards .

Dear Próinsias,

Got that I am , that in reading this down, I should be scrolling up these You To Me To I To Us Two letters. Not down but up. Yes, too long German´s inbuilt con-man ” M ´illumino / D´immenso ”

stuff. Extraordinary.
Phrank

Dear Phrank,

we are both too long here in High Germanee . ” The Great NO THING an-nihil-ates . Us both, thrashing and turning and disappearing on our weirdly wide , momentarily placid John Montague ocean.
Got that? ”

Próinsias

Dear Próinsias,

Please. Ideally bottom scrolled up to top . – I / you love / are / am / need / answer / ask / complement / cross-question/ tease / drown / word and sing / compose / decompose / dance on /

dance under / brake / break / refashion / bake / re-knead / re-read / you / Me .

What was that you were on about a few e-letters ago : ” Nothing ( No thing , Nothung ! ) . It dis-nots . It de-knots us. ”

What was that all about, eh ?

Phrank

Dear Phrank,

I´ve lost it . Read this letters rondo top to bottom ? Bottom up ? Unscroll ? Rondo form, near enough.

Próinsias

Dear Próinsias,

this one only short.

Who are you ? Peel off what layers ? Thrash around on which ocean ? No thing at all ? Our oceans all distroyed thermonuclearly ? ( Destroy an ocean. Dislocate a shoulder , a self )

Phrank

Dear Phrank,

That was a nice touch, your ” I or Me” , and all waiting for the cosmic click to click his ” him ” away. Into virtual space ? Into the molecules´ gardene of delighte ? Delightes? Yes, that ” immense

and still ” ( I like that too ) water as our scary mirror of nothingness , of formlessness and wet purposelessness and deep unprofundity and no why in sight at all down at the totally dark ocean-bed.

Yes, shudderingly cold. Still.

Your still dry Old Other Self,

Próinsias

Dear Próinsias,

Well, yes, I had promised a less sluggish ” I To Me To You ” electronic ping-ponging in this abiding cold January.

It´s not only that ” Me ” or ” I ” will be waiting for the quick click that´ll make my Holy Name vanish – for ever

– or at least until the next click clicks ( – ” For whom the clock ticks “, ” To every tock its tick, ” etc. ) .

It is the smooth ( ? ) surface of that immense and still water ( “Upon which we all turn / Turn and thrash / And disappear ” . John Montague . ) which will open and swallow me

down. Down into oceanic nothing.

Shudderingly cold today, Próinsias ? Don´t think of me , Phrank

Dear Phrank,

Apparently Job never felt the cold at all , neither the submarine temperatures of his frightful ( though mobile ) oceanic tomb, nor before nor indeed since. Oh, sorry, he had no ” since”. – Is it

this which might be moving you to be e-penning me, eh ? The good old-fashioned “Caoin tú féin, a Phraink Bhoicht !” ? – Is it that you´ll become nothing? – you will become no thing ? Not a thing? –

A former person, now dis-jointed, dislocated and , well, disintegrated ? Not a shadow.

Remember thou art not dust, no earthly thing, – once you were earthy; yes, ho -ho, now you´ve apparently no now, you possess no future; your once and only, lonely past seems to have got lost in

your Stygian “journey”, if that is what necessarily self-contradicting language has to risk calling it? So that´s it, then ? Kerner Wuetzfeld was / is not / nor will “he” be, for ever and ever and ever, –

he´ll be a mere nothing, merely ” nothing ?

What , then, Phrank, is

this ” nothing”, this ” mere”, from whose bourne no traveller returns his e-pen?

Próinsias