Frank Corcoran

Sidle up to that bad myth, pop-apocalyptic lite New Year´s “Crack ! ” and ” Whoosh” and bad fireworks, the poor dawg long since gone in hiding under the bed. Resolve: to nurture creative springs; only let good work through; fagh de begrudgers; dredge deeper; avoid trappers´ traps; let it out, the sound of crafty
2013 . My new work, even if still dormant, will ( I`LL REMEMBER THIS ) have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with activities such as reception of , caring for , placing musical works for performances .
Hold steady in the strife between anger and prudence. Do not hurl pig-droppings at a gift-horse.
Such resolutions . For imminent 2013. In spite of heat-death, galaxy-death, time´s death.

In my deep heart´s core
Sings the nightingale of plums,
And moon-lit blossoms

Sick our sickle moon
A nightingale flutes softly
New and old music

You could think of Frank Corcoran’s new Violin Concerto (premièred by Alan Smale with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under Christopher Warren-Green at the NCH recently) as a hard man’s homage to songfulness. The soloist cautioned the composer about music that sings, and the composer responded with a piece that he regards has having in its second movement some of the sweetest he has ever written.

2008 1. July. The Warehouse London

FIDELIO PIANO TRIO : Frank Corcoran´s PIANO TRIO ( 1976. 9´. )

Early in 2013 ( we will sidle up, carefully, yes, obliquely to This Bad Myth ) I promise students of e- comedy at this corner of the Irish Composers´ Wood :

1. On Having Been Forty – Charming – Years Long An Irish Composer.

2. On Cowardice in Composers and in Cowardly Composers´ Musical Thinking.

Yes, forty long years. Whence my hope for 2013 ?

HAIKU FOR 21. 12. 2012

The morning misty
“Mímmenso di gloria”
Sings our Weltschmerz

The usual slink .- Up to the 21. of December, stealth before solstice. No good poormouthing either about our bad seasonal myths , commerce and churches in cahoots. ( Nor will doing a Savonarola do – we done enough burning of people, trinkets, ideas, boats and aspirations and sighs ) . Huddle around the flame; keep home fires burning; ask not The Why; be silent as a radiated reindeer somewhere in North Finland . Advent is nigh, a beast slurring. 2013 tones will come in their own time. Put out the light, would you, when going out. Tomorrow is a new December dawn . Be not caught nor caught out, white head drowsing, your bushel unkicked away.

More durable than the bronze sheen of Giambologna in his Bargello, than Bandinelli´s marbles or bad sand-stone occasionally offered to Michaelangelo. More enduring than hammered stone, though ” only ” sound-waves imagined and formed and wrought into a new musical work . Ecstasy , really exciting; it excites others then too . That´s what I was after, down to Florence and back up on a tail-spin over the snow-capped winter Alps, the small propeller-plane itself a memory of my early Aer Lingus flights of my sixties. Mystery, memory, ecstastic, my three good December words. 2013 will highlight them. In new work, chiselled and hammered and bashed and sounding. In the Bargello of my composer´s mind.
Then it´s let the tormented gongs loose.

You´re a Holy Caution ! ( Don´t let the fire out ! )
Blowing carefully on the flickering flame between sound-vision and the next; be
prepared; it´ll come in the longest December night , the next compositional idea.
For now it´s husband wintry reserves, keep wrapped up the composing self, even after the recent chamber compositions ( one work for Harp and Cello , another for the Cardiff Cubistic lads with Guitar, Viola and Flute. Zagreb Biennale with my early break-through Piano Trio ´ll be nice, the wheel´s full circle. They also compose ( music , yes ) who only sit and wait. Don´t repeat myself. Ever. Feel the heat in the grey castle cold. I tried Speed Writhing, lep over censoring blocks , frontal, at full-speed. It´ll come.
Sound Advent.

Cold ruining my mind

Cut off all gangrenous toes

Singing ” The Blue Note”