Frank Corcoran

QUASI UNA FUGA Frank Corcoran

” Quasi Una Fuga” is in no way neo-baroque ( – this I consider to be a pretty unfortunate stylistic aberration of certain 20 th. c. composers ; eg. Stravinsky´s back-to-Bach works are not his best. Bach did it better…. ) . Yet it does have something, in fact everything, to do with counterpoint; my 18 strings play only lines throughout.
Yes, there is a theme, a counter-theme. In my ” Quasi – Exposition” you hear rising entries , from low cello and bass to high violins, then descending entries ( my melodic shape has become its own inversion! ) This protean, easily recognizable theme comes in every conceivable shape through the ebb and flow of my one movement-work, consisting entirely of bits and fragments and smithereens of the “fugal” theme ; it is mutating and morphing all the time until it has become at last the ( five-tone ) Early Medieval Celtic chant, ” Ibunt Sancti”, one of St. Brendan The Navigator´s favourite melodies. Was this the hymn his twelve monks sang , preparing their dinner on the back of a N. Atlantic whale near Greenland …. ? ) .
This is the final composition in my ” Quasi” series of these last years ; from ” Quasi Un Canto ” for Large Orchestra ( Zagreb 2004 ) to ” Quasi Un Pizzicato” for Singer, Speaker and Ensemble ( Hamburg 2005 ) , these works reflect the fact that no composer living today is musically innocent. I know too much music of the past, too much world-music. Of course ” Quasi Una Fuga” feels the shadow of giant-composers from my recent past. Without being beholden to any man, I must know what great music for string-orchestra was written by eg. Bartók, Ligeti and Lutoslawski. My composition is only ” quasi” a fugue, while being entirely fugal.

The seed twitches. It has to. Sixty years on in the script, that particular plot thickened into my spaceship´s curdled Bortsch soup while our captain and lovely she sang their myxolydian,” high – art – how -are -you?”
Shy, still dreadfully young, of course, theologian Johannes Kepler had arrived in ” My Mamma´s-A- Witch” interspace dog-cart at my intragalctic sluice ( Heaven´s planetary leps still far ahead in this canophile´s future )
; I had to pay for the good eight dogs´ astro-taxi, proving how impossibly uvular Swabians behave, actually .
The seed sighs. Bubble, young, troubled extraplanetary professor´s chalk-on-our-N.A.S.A.-blackboard , bemused young gynophobe our – on that evening- bedoggled Johannes .
Take space-time off .
Metaphors or adjectives, in truth, time – travel killeth.Imagine starry Kant who´d have throttled at first warning an astronaut´s quickie in our module ? Which student taught them two chance-theory? Slurp the Bortsch , all eight taxi-dogs ; a long way it surely is ye´ve rocketed from around Jupiter´s lunatics . We´ll suppose that Kepler´s and Kant´s seed-sighing did unite ; well, what offspring of which female pilot admits to immortal longings while whooshing planets are hurling by our small modular windows in astonishment ? “He´s NOT here!” was the Soviet statement that settled that at the time!
Real truth was seldom hidden by Johannes Kepler´s dog-taxi equations eg.Newton´s gynophob = his own kynophob ? Yes, I did pay that unshaven Swabian astronomer´s astronomic taxi-bill ; yes, our captain was aft in the engine-room. And future generations will hymn her , will call her Stella .The seed sings , it makes no mention of any taxi-astrohounds raping their food tin that was warped by General Relativity on that astral occasion of my starry conception. Ex Oriens, unshaven Kepler, as yet no Newton praying for the sinners´ parabola.
Once upon a time I was nothing, not even space-travel dog-soup! ( It´s all the wrong people travel by taxi up there nowadays ) . Mind how you hymn the equations. Who will stir the Bortsch pot for eight Stuttgart shuttle-hounds? Quick now , we have but a second. Ease her back on Jupiter´s solstice fierce, throttle in your left; never mention words like “scrotum”, or ” space-coffin” again on our ship while I´m still at hatch number one extracting an odd Swabian astronomer out of his ” My Mammy Is No Witch” canelingual interplanetary taxi.

There were no Catholic dogs in Kepler´s eight-pack that night as I fumbled for small change for his enormous taxi-bill . Bay uvular Swäbisch, cosmic taxi-pups after rescuing Kepler´s Swabian Ma from burning , quantum seconds after my own conception in the rocket-hold. Twitches seed ? Sings seed ? Or why should travel burn all our metaphors to a Von Braun Frazzle ? Hymn her what ? Kant´s starry tent over a Stuttgart sky and her ” yes ” to Terrific Captain Startrek´s quickie charm while stirring Bortsch in a narrow space-cabin.

Steiger ! Down ! Hush, Puppy von Braun ! Wait your turn, Prancer and Dancer and Black Pup and Sky-Keeper´s off-spring, the Basker Twins! Eat Your Bortsch ! Sons and mothers worship module images: He and She and Our Captain´s Feinty Foot-work, fusing their galactic Bortsch and their quickie-seed at high velocities. From where comes this comets´ soup ? Whooshed detritus is our mysterious preterite and our future fumus, our Swabian Werner von Braun horizon all awash, aglow, awhoosh, a-Swab , ah Stuttgart, eight dogs pulling Kepler´s taxi , bound for my stratospheric home that night as Jupiter glowed and the captain, my future father, was down on the sack at her back. Plying my business.

THE DRIVE TO COMPOSE DRIVEL DIES LAST

This next shot slows down the perception of Time = MÉ FÉIN .It will ( – aha! now sneaks in tense ? ) brake my féin-tempore , mo fhéin-am, the fine self as 1500 x 997 pixels .
I was nine and not well. In our pre-Famine school-lavatory, little “I” was wandering up from the nethers to the little treble voice, pet.” Do thy milking ” it sang. ( Years later, she was my cow )
The next but one shot slows the keening of chronological time down . July 11 will be the Limerick premiere of new orchestral work, right beside the glistening Shannon. While she ( it´s Irish, silly ) awaits this event , this brazen river is asking blithely why I appear more future-dependent , look you, than I was ever gone on the idea the world couldn´t possible dare to have existed prior, say, to my beginning to exist ?
The Shannon Estuary is wide. Good image here, never soiled by bad or virtual poets.The River Jordan is chilly and cold – and it was thus as I came up for breath, nethers and torso well-oiled for the day´s acquatic struggle. ( A change of river for an unusual shot , gaffers – from Shannon to Jordan to Lethe, sorry, no, make it Styx. )In the shock of hitting the surface I had´nt time for usual Augustinian speculations about infantile wanderings on, about the I-pains , not even time for a quick thought about that cold, old, gray river portending great cosmic cold. ( Is the infinite great ? )
What about diving under again, blue boy, axel-grease a thin protection for the nethers and your little treble voice, pet, and the wandering self-chill, pet, and a partially developed “mé feín pain” and the pet´s song-pain that my young treble fluted through the class-room to prop a nine-year-old´s wobbly enough féin-ghrá, little sagging ” I” and the cosmos indifferent. Pan
then from Styx to Jordan, back to Shannon . My guardian- archangel´s pig-slurried left foot ( they, too, have two ) sharply shoved my surfacing anew junior swimming ” ringletted youth of my love ” back down into his riverly The Heavenly Anaesthetician´s Song . ( She was my cow years later )
Slurried he , a real churl archangelic, soiled the lovely ringlets with otherworldly pig-slurry – yet without converting me one whit from wandering child´s I-pain , nor yet from a ( – hey ! – totally justifiable, – I have argued several ” Musings ” earlier, perched on the West Face of Skellig Mhichil , was it September 2005 or a balmy, autumnal thereabouts ? ) – or my – perfect right to whinge A Cold Shannon Song .
Under those mutinous Shannon Estuary waves , for that oiled, greased moment, cold little I had the cold peace to argue the toss: was it true ” I = Time ? ” Would it hold water, my watery equation, that ” the Present Tense = Mé Féin ” ? And, if yes, does it also entail ” My Future = Only Me ? ” i.e. my final cadence will be the pet´s ringlets and my treble lay fluting in our Pre-Famine school´s ruined toilets , singing of post-birth : ” mé-féin = mé-pains ” ? Or: ” Nethers and their wandering ” I” ? ” But if yes, yes, yes, does this, why this, wherefore this Shannon – Euclidian turn, how entail that: ” the past before my lived past = the lie of my ” I ” ?
More succinctly versed: ” Supposin´, supposin´ / The Shannon was frozen . / – I am Time . / So´s THAT just fine ? ”
T´was full fathoms five down I fluted The Young Shannon Estuary Lay Of The Ringletted Youth :
” Winter-time is bleak ! / Small me ´s not well. / – Swam up , nethers meek, / My infant I-pain leaked / Its féin- ghrá wild ! / Oh cold Shannon-child ! / My sub-Shannon drivel ! / Like which nether evil , / Like what temporal weevil – / Nerves now me ? / Nerves also it ? / A child´s cold it / Which longs to be born again ? / – Like life after a life ? / – My Shannon- or my Styx- life ? / Is that more IT ? / More archangels´ shit ? / Maybe It = You ? / Time , bist DU ? / Spoiled water-pet, / Philo-monster , let / Shannon´s gluttonous waves / Roll over knaves, / And archangelic pig-slurry, / Over all selfish hurry / To peek, to slobber , / To flute treble verse / With its end-rhyme, ” HEARSE! ”
Then ´twas a sharp second slurried archangelic foot-feint sent this youthful, greased diver down under I -chilling waves. I was now under in Jordan. ( – he and He. She figured later as a cow. ) . River-doves fugued my fluminal I-ruin, my fluvial, doomed baptism. Duck deadly the slurried foot-puck, cold my Raphael, bold my Gabriel, a bit slurried my Michael. Thus was I Jordan- and Shannon-besoiled, say be-Styxed . A submarine pet´s only chance now: DO NOT be always goin´ on with the Shannon- Question! – cease your Jordan-Query ! Leave Lethe alone !
Bold Raphael, slurried Michael, strong-kick Archipatel , side-kick Gabriel, how can ye bisect my temporality ? how on earth mingle with my present ( or future) tense under this Estuary ? Beats me. I drown.