Frank Corcoran


Frank Corcoran is an Irish composer. His output includes chamber, symphonic, choral and electro-acoustic music, through which he often explores Irish mythology and history.

Life

"I came late to art music; childhood soundscapes live on. The best work with imagination/intellect must be exorcistic-laudatory-excavatory. I am a passionate believer in "Irish" dream-landscape, two languages, polyphony of history, not ideology or programme. No Irish composer has yet dealt adequately with our past. The way forward – newest forms and technique – is the way back to deepest human experience."

Born in Borrisokane, County Tipperary, Corcoran studied at Dublin, Maynooth, Rome and Berlin, where he was a pupil of Boris Blacher. He was a music inspector for the Irish government Department of Education from 1971 to 1979, after which he took up a composer fellowship from the Berlin Künstlerprogramm. He has taught in Berlin, Stuttgart and Hamburg, where he has been professor of composition and theory in the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. He was a visiting professor and Fulbright scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the U.S. in 1989-90 and has been a guest lecturer at CalArts, Harvard University, Princeton University, Boston College, New York University, and Indiana University.
Corcoran has been a member of Aosdána, the Irish academy of creative artists, since its inception in 1983. He was the first Irish composer to have had a symphony premiered in Vienna.
Corcoran lives in Germany and Italy.

Music

In the late 1970s, Corcoran developed a technique he calls "macro-counterpoint". Related to similar approaches by Witold Lutosławski and György Ligeti, it "refers to the contrapuntal treatment of layers of sound as opposed to the traditional focus of the intervallic compatibility of one line with another" as in traditional counterpoint. The first composition in which he applied this technique was the Piano Trio. Here, the three instruments each form an independent layer of sound, moving at their own speed and in individual time signatures, numbers of bars, etc. The individual lines remain transparent throughout. At specific points in the score, the musicians are asked to pause in order to start again simultaneously.
Corcoran's strong identification with his Irish heritage has led to many compositions inspired by Celtic Irish mythology, and modern Irish literature. A series of works in various genres written between 1996 and 2003 focus on the life of "Mad Sweeney", a minor 7th-century king from the north of Ireland who is the subject of the ancient Irish tale Buile Shuibhne. Many other works also have an Irish focus, including the choral Nine Medieval Irish Epigrams, the percussion piece Music for the Book of Kells and some works referring to the work of Irish writers James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel Rosenstock, and Seamus Heaney.
Another series of works with titles beginning on the word "Quasi...", written since 1999, highlights and interprets concepts such as visions or musical forms and expressions such as concertino, lamento, fuga, sarabanda, pizzicato, etc. which serve as both inspiration for the music and as creative raw material.

Awards

Corcoran has won a number of awards throughout his career. Recent awards include:
Orchestral
Chamber ensembles
Solo instrumental
Vocal and choral
  • Nine Medieval Irish Epigrams, satb
  • Ceol an Aifrinn
  • Gilgamesh, 7 soli, satb, orchestra
  • Nine Aspects of a Poem, satb, vn
  • Carraig aonair, soprano, alto, pf
  • Kiesel, soprano, 2vn, va
  • Cúig amhráin de chuid Gabriel Rosenstock, soprano, vn, vc, pf
  • Dán Aimhirgín, soprano, va, bcl, pf
  • Buile Suibhne, fl+pic+afl, ob, cl+bcl, hn, perc, vn, va, vc, db, spkr
  • Quasi una melodia, soprano, tsax, va, mar, pf
  • Quasi un pizzicato, fl, hp, pf, perc, spkr
  • The Light Gleams, soprano, bcl, vn, vc
  • Four Orchestral Prayers, mezzo, orch
  • Five Lieder, tenor, pf
  • Songs of Terror and Love, bass, fl+picc+afl, cl+bcl, pf, vn+va, vc
  • Eight Haikus, satb
  • My Alto Rhapsodies, alto, orch
  • An Irish Christmas Carol, satb
Electro-acoustic'