Frank Corcoran

But how and where and why should they hear and listen to ( keep distinct, please ) any
Corcoran composition ? Which festivals, radio-stations, multipliers to cast broad ?
Why
listen ? Without the necessary accompanying hype, advertising, ?
– Are you kidding ? In this age of Scopology Gone Mad ? ( Ours is the age of Peeping Tom, the viewer-zapper rather than Listening Tom, the courageous searcher for a well-crafted , exquisitely composed musical work ? )
Who has any longer the capacity / facility/ expectancy/ musical culture to “think tones” with their composer ? To listen to and to understand any musical structure that lasts longer than , say, a minute ? Illiterate hearing is global ; for where are the kindergartens and little schools to school our skill of listening ?

Zbigniew Herbert : MR. COGITO

beware of dryness of heart, love the
morning spring,
the bird with an unknown name,
the winter oak,
the light on the wall, the splendor of the sky.
they do not need your warm breath;
they are there to say: no one will console you….

Maybe I should not have added the punctuation ? I knew him, a great man, Zbigniew Herbert ( he was proud of his English relatives in Poland some centuries ago, his
connection with George Herbert ) , great poet, ironicist , true rebel; faithful to himself.
1980 in West Berlin ( we shared the Berliner Akademischer Austauschdienst as guests of the beleagured city ) we tippled and dined. MR. COGITO is one of the great poems of understatement. There are others. Gives me courage, actually.

Warm, yellow butter melts behind the pulled blinds and window shades as , outside , the trees and snakes and yellowed grass and brown flowers and plants are baked a grand ochre entirely. Soon honey-moon September will cool down a degree or three and evening balm ´ll be mighty, the half Garibaldi smoke curling up to the night sky and the harvest moon flitting. Maybe the obscure longings will long for their tones and half-tones, be boxed up, shuffle, threaded out in long melismatas or short horn-calls, a lyrical moments in the flux, the butter-melting slowed down . One more harvest reached , one more summer sweated out on tufa, terra cotta, boiling basalt. Tempus fugit . Hot time is also time. Breathed in delightfully after ” L áfa del pomeriggio ei Alto Lazio”.

A number of new works by Frank Corcoran will be performed in September and October.
The Still-Life with Guitar trio will premiere Corcoran’s work for flute, viola and guitar Seven Cubist Miniatures for Cardiff at the National Museum of Cardiff on 13 September. The ensemble, featuring Emma Coulthard on flute, Philip Heyman on viola and Michael McCartney on guitar, is dedicated to performing new or rarely heard music featuring the guitar and performers.

In October, the award-winning University of the Philippines Madrigal Singers will premiere Corcoran’s ” 8 Haikus ” . The piece, written to texts by the composer himself, was selected as the winner out of 637 entries of the International Federation for Choral Music’s Second International Competition for Choral Composition. The performance will take place in Manila on 5 and 6 October.

Jostle quickly the choral tones, an interval, that odd sigh in octaves for my sopranoes and altos; that splayed bass – cluster :… I look again at my 1976 choral HERR JESU CHRIST for, i- t was then thus, – S A T B – Paul Fleming; a good German Baroque doctor and dichter … But he
put de fear of God in me that year ( from their Thirty Years War ), my be-poxed equilibrium.
Is itnow so far from that ( the RTE SINGERS with wonderful Dr. Hans Waldemar brought my
Corcoran´s Death- WOLP to that epoch-breaking I.S.C.M. 1979 , also my 1982. )
that my newest ( I won that ) First Prize Outright of the 2013 International Federation For Choral Music , my “stunning ” EIGHT HAIKUS” ?
– Fear of my death ? My dying this e-mailing night ? Of salvation ( but from what ? ) ?
C´mon ?

1.

WORLD-CLASS CHOIR TO PREMIERE Frank Corcoran´s ” 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 world-class choirs to follow this.
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).

2. September 13. 13.00
National Museum Of Wales, Cardiff, STILL-LIFE WITH GUITAR TRIO
will
premiere Frank Corcoran´s commissioned ” Seven Miniatures For Cardiff” for Flute,
Viola and Guitar.

3. December 1. Hugh Lane Gallery Sunday Noon Concert with the
O´Donnell Percussion , conductor: Richard O´Donnell, Piano: Frank
Corcoran with Frank Corcoran´s MUSIC FOR THE BOOK OF KELLS for 5
Percussion and Irish Pianist ( 1990 University of Wisconsin commission )
and ” TRAUERFELDER / GOIRT AN BHRÓIN ”
for 4 Percussion ( Hamburg City Culture Minister commission for the

50th. anniversary of the Liberation from Auschwitz. )

Frank Corcoran : THREE HAIKUS FOR THE CARDIFF STILL-LIFE WITH
GUITAR TRIO
( for our September 2013 Cardiff National Museum Concert premiering my newly commissioned SEVEN CUBIST MINIATURES for Guitar , Flute and Viola )

1. Flute, then viola.
Gris´s guitar. Still his brush-strokes.
It´s painted music.

2. Beware now, Cardiff !
“Hang all harpers and pipers!”
Pass round this gay cup!

3. Take now three colours.
Tones sigh, die, fight painted death.
Poised paint is music.

Obscure longings, a good start, yes. But never enough. Start with the real, physical possibilities of the instrument, voice, ensemble. Then comes the tricky bit, the A and B and the C chosen. Only then does form raise its obscure head – how long the work, how thin or expanding or mourning or rumbling the sludge in the basses and tuba, how ascend ? Come down? “Hesitant” versus “direct” is still a very good formula; also its inverse… So
then how´ll we come to the end ? ( How did we begin? – Why ? )
Not once does “For whom ? ” come into this, my story, at least. Later categories later – eg. will it be dramatic ? Eough? A narrative of what ? Unfold / develop / the hallowed rosary-beads
form etc.
Now I am in big, hot trouble, this sun roaring.

Caoin´tú fhéin, a choirc,
Long and cold is The Hen´s Song.
Winter rain her knife.

Driving winter rain
The hen huddling and moaning
Her keen: ” Scél lem díb ! ”

Did it look thus a thousand years ago , the Cimini a purple gold and all trees aghast, a-hush ? – Before the great heat is even awake ? All Haikus still asleep ?
Today is still my empty bucket of water waiting to be filled by what ( free ? Unfree ? ) human decisions? Which wary steps of this knowing I ? A few musical thoughts , wisps of intervallic shapes , a banal cadence or two, vague feelings of wanting to milk this blue golden dawn… add X and Y to cart. Hot voices. It will get hot , hot enough to stop the Birds´ Matutinal Chorus, then more. Hot stones you could bake griddle cake on.
Now it is just lovely.