Frank Corcoran

Betreff: WGXC Composer-Portrait

2.2.2017 WGXC ” The Cutty Strange ” .

Frank Corcoran / Composer-Portrait incl.

QUSI UNA MISSA, ( WDR commission 1999 . Swedish E.M.S. Prize 2002 )

TRAUERFELDER , ( NDR 1995 )

QUASI UNA MISSA, ( Irish Chamber Orchestra / Anthony Marwood 2006 )

VIOLIN CONCERTO, ( NSO 2013 )

CELLO CONCERTO. ( NSO 2015 )

Frank Corcoran CELLO CONCERTO

For years I´d wanted to compose a Concerto for Cello and big orchestra – my singing David against its mighty Goliath . But I didn´t trust myself to face what

is, yes,

a mighty challenge until I´d first composed my Violin Concerto which Christopher Warren-Green premiered with the NSO and great soloist, Alan Smale, in

Nov. 2012 . I worked closely with Alan as he prepared his Concerto ; his advice to me , the composer, was ” Frank, SING IT !” And this same advice was vital

as, one year later, I began work on this even bigger Corcoran Concerto for the mighty cello – bow of Martin Johnson. This four movement work has even greater proportions ; this

solo instrument has to face an even bigger orchestral battle .

It sings and soars, somewhere between Dvorak ´s and Lutoslawski´s epic works. The opening reveals a broad gesture for trumpets and brass which will

return several times , quasi a ” motto” theme. My Slow Movement would tear the heart out of you, the cello´s beautiful cantilena weaving, sobbing,

dying. The searing Scherzo, with its huge battery of percussion is the most violent music I ever wrote…. The music winds down then in the last, meditative

finale.

WORLD-CLASS CHOIR TO PREMIERE Frank Corcoran´s stunning ” 8 Haikus “

which won the 2013 First Prize Outright ( out of an international field
of 670 submitted choral scores ) of The International Federation For
Choral Music. Other top-class choirs to follow…

The University of the Philippines Madrigal Singers was organized in
1963 by National Artist Professor Andrea O. Veneracion. The group is
composed of students, faculty and alumni from the different colleges of
the University of the Philippines (UP). The choir is one of the world’s
most awarded, having consistently won all the top prizes in most of the
world’s prestigious choral competitions: Arezzo and Gorizia in Italy,
Marktoberdorf in Germany, Spittal in Austria, Neuchatel in Switzerland,
Tours in France, Varna in Bulgaria, Debrecen in Hungary, Cantonigros,
Tolosa and Torrevieja in Spain. They hold the distinction of being the
first choir in the world to win the European Grand Prix for Choral
Singing twice (1997 and 2007).

Frank agus na Muca
Gabriel Rosenstock

Na muca a mhúin an ceol duit
Nótaí ísle
Nótaí arda
Nótaí nach gcloiseann na muca féin

Tá breis is 200 ainm ar Éirinn
Inis na Muc ceann acu

Is beannaithe í an dair
Is beannaithe dá réir sin
An mhuc a itheann toradh na darach
An dearcán

Tá tú 70
Tá tú ag iompú i do dhearcán

Mo sheacht mbeannacht ort

Frank and the Pigs
It was the pigs that taught you music
Low notes
High notes
Notes that the pigs themselves don’t hear

Ireland has more than 200 names
One is Inis na Muc, Isle of Pigs

The oak is sacred
By osmosis so too
The pig that eats the fruit of the oak
The acorn

You are 70
You are turning into an acorn

Seven blessings upon you

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION FOR CHORAL COMPOSITION

The International Federation for Choral Music (IFCM) will host the IFCM International Competition for Choral Composition from time to time. The chief aim of which is to promote the creation and wide distribution of new and innovative choral repertoire.

The date of the next IFCM Competition for Choral Composition is yet to be announced.

Winner 2013
Francis Corcoran (Ireland) “Eight Haikus”

JURY 2013

Graham Lack (Germany)
John A. Pamintuan (The Philippines)
Libby Larsen (USA)
Olli Kortekangas (Finland)
Paul Stanhope (Australia)

Betreff: WGXC Composer-Portrait

2.2.2017 WGXC ” The Cutty Strange ” .

Frank Corcoran / Composer-Portrait incl.

QUSI UNA MISSA, ( WDR commission 1999 . Swedish E.M.S. Prize 2002 )

TRAUERFELDER , ( NDR 1995 )

QUASI UNA MISSA, ( Irish Chamber Orchestra / Anthony Marwood 2006 )

VIOLIN CONCERTO, ( NSO 2013 )

CELLO CONCERTO. ( NSO 2015 )

Suoni d’Irlanda per Frank Corcoran a Orvieto e Bolsena
martedì 28 luglio 2015
Suoni d’Irlanda per Frank Corcoran a Orvieto e Bolsena

Due appuntamenti imperdibili per chi ama la musica classica e al contempo una grande occasione per celebrare uno dei massimi compositori irlandesi viventi che da alcuni anni ha deciso di trascorrere gran parte dell’anno nella campagna alle porte di Bagnoregio.

In onore di Frank Corcoran, nato a Tipperary nel 1944, tre solisti della National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland (Martin Johnson, Adele Johnson, Fergal Caulfield) eseguiranno musiche di Schubert, Popper, Brahms e dello stesso Corcoran in due date, la prima ad Orvieto, al Teatro Mancinelli venerdì 31 luglio alle ore 21:15.

La seconda a Bolsena, al Piccolo Teatro Cavour domenica 2 agosto alla stessa ora. Ad entrambi i concerti, sarà presente il maestro Corcoran.

Concorde

Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

This concert by Jane O’Leary’s new-music ensemble, Concorde, included the Irish premiere of Four Pieces(2006), by young Slovenian composer Nina Senk, which the ensemble will perform in Ljubljana next month.

Senk is only 25, but the riveting playing of Elaine Clark (violin), David James (cello) and Dermot Dunne (accordion) made it easy to hear why her music is already much travelled.

The rest of the programme drew on Concorde’s rich back-catalogue of Irish commissions. Two vocal works from 2006, Frank Corcoran’s The Light Gleams and Elaine Agnew’s In the Adriatic, were elegantly articulated by soprano Tine Verbeke.

Taking a fragment of text from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Corcoran’s piece places its three monosyllables in a setting of poised abstraction, as if examining its vowels and consonants from various angles under a powerful microscope.

Well, I was ten years younger. I had not yet composed the Cello Concerto, the Violin Concerto, Four Orchestral Prayers, Quasi Una Fuga and several other Corcoran works. Nor had I yet learned serenit’a, accept it all. Nor written my recent Sceal Beag. Nor yet discovered wild garlic, thyme, basil or origano. Nor written certain focal Haikus. Nor even thought of publishing the Festschrift Frank Corcoran ( or its sub-title : “An Irish Composer Invents Himself.” ) nor presented my ” Seven Theses On James Joyce And Music ” in the Dublin James Joyce Centre.
So whose used-up yarn is this spinning ? How is this writing voyeur ? My own e-entrails? 2006 was no bad year.
Which
looking–glass declares an interest?
Evening–questions seldom going away,let fine fingers sing it:
Take Euclidian parallels. Take: ‘‘Can music ever be completely
programme–free?’’ Now if your answer is ‘‘Yes’’, why can’t we make a case also for the
occasional, programme–free Musing? This here is one such: perhaps in the
whole flaming firmament, this e–mail might be only the second known case of
an Uncaused Cause (lower case, please). E–scutter floweth as it will,
meandering magma loitering,causing a civilized smile.
It’s not actually enough to fob off Our Great E–typing Author with
‘‘uncaused causation’’.
Bad enough to be caught anywhere near this theory of
‘‘any possible programme’’ (– eg. Our Muser–Author’s ounds, the scrofulous breakfast, gene
versus Jane versus Holy Joe in early boyhood).
Much worse, oh woe, not to expect anything from an e–mail, no effect,
none. Nothing. If idle is as idle strives to be, if (as here) it be
meta–musing on and on how to see behind its own very behind, then, there, be the
art of comedy chided.
This e–centred, this I–centred e–thrust, swallowed up in victory, all very
well that ; – by the way, who’ll fork out the cheque–book when the
celestial nuptials for ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘Me’’ draw nigh, this very night?
What be e–writing at all, mused or fused tohuwabohu?
Then suffices no ‘‘It’s only snorting self–expression’’.
As is, ahem,the courtier’s microtonally tuned fart. And the humbler’s
(eaten well prior) white–beans for lunch after the early morning’s quartering
up at Hangman’s Square.
I wasn’t it. He there. Master Magma himself, careful, boy.
Not every musing could keep up concealing the awkward given of the
e–mail reflexive, the e–mail at play, the e–mail confessional, Gödel’s E–mail,
the e–cry,the e–caoine, e–haiku and e–mourn. They’re on the prowl, our
dear anti ‘‘Musing’’ police. Have to be. You couldn’t allow total e–licence to the e–plebs.
O Inner circle, sneak closer. Either a ‘‘Musing ’’ amuses or, in its musing, it bemuses. Either it’s an Uncaused Cause (– but‘‘LOWER CASE, PLEASE’’)
or is eén now causing wryness, a dry throat, reach for red pencil, sure the
man’s mad as a muser? Exhausted WHO is emailing exhaustive whom the following
text: ‘‘This e–message is in love with itself’’?
What makes our homo e–scribens so different, we left the wall–paintings and
Sumerian crúisgín l´an behind a long time ago? Out with it, your cheap
attacks on e–courage! Beat intransivity, slash the e–knot of reflexiveness!
Quod scripsi non really scripsi, true or Gödel–true? Could it be that,
e–quill and e–ink put tranquilly aside, we never, never, never love
unselfishly? Who said you can’t be e–mailing ‘‘In Paradisum’’? Is Paradise my mode of
existence while I mutate into my own e–mail? All changed, changed utterly, I
now am subsumed into whatI´ve actually written. I have become this e–text. Scared?
Naw… My actual existence is virtuality. What is behind my behind,
then? How’ll I have a look?

Music critic Michael Dervan (who has been music critic at the Irish Times since 1986) loves music – but realised as he grew up that Irish composers were often hidden musicians. With his book Invisible Art, he set out to address this. For the book, he commissioned pieces by a range of expert writers about Irish music from 1916 – 2016.

Ireland stands unique among the nations of the world in having a musical instrument, the harp, as its national emblem. Irish musicians of all hues are widely celebrated. Riverdance has been an international phenomenon for two decades. Flautist James Galway and the rock band U2 are known all over the world. Singer Sinéad O’Connor is famous enough for her behaviour on US chat shows to create international headlines. And traditional music is even more widely dispersed than the phenomenon of the Irish pub.

Composing the Island, the September 2016 festival of 27 concerts over 19 days, was a pretty hefty event by any measure. And it was not even designed to celebrate the full history of composition in Ireland, just the works of the last hundred years. There has been nothing quite like it before. Anywhere. Ever.

Yet the tradition of music it salutes has long had in Ireland a Cinderella-like position, an invisibility that can sometimes seem like the airbrushing or photoshopping into non-existence of a major art form.

Composers have felt the slight acutely. ‘I’m a Composer’—‘You’re a What?’ was the title Frank Corcoran gave an essay he contributed to The Crane Bag back in 1982. It was his way of explaining that Irish people simply didn’t see being a composer as a serious or full-time occupation.