Frank Corcoran

Frank Corcoran (born 1944) is a distinguished Irish composer. His output includes chamber, symphonic, choral and electro-acoustic music, through which he explores particularly Irish issues like language and history. He has worked with text by the poet Seamus Heaney, in the chamber piece Mad Sweeney (1996), and by the Irish-language writer Gabriel Rosenstock.²

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 (for me especially macro-counterpoint) – is the way back to deepest human experience.'³

Born in Tipperary in 1944, he studied at Dublin, Maynooth, Rome and Berlin. He was a music inspector for the Irish government Department of Education from 1971 to 1979, after which he took up a composer fellowship at the Berlin Künstlerprogramm. In the 1980s, he taught in Berlin, Stuttgart and Hamburg, where he was professor of composition and theory in the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Hamburg. He was a visiting professor and Fulbright scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the U.S. in 1989-1990, and has been a guest lecturer at CalArts, Harvard University, Princeton University, Boston College, New York University and Indiana University.^1,2

He is the only Irish composer whose 1. Symphony ( “Symphonies of Symphonies of Wind” ) was premiered in Vienna in 1981.¹

Corcoran lives in Germany and Italy.

Recent Works

His output includes chamber, symphonic, choral and electro-acoustic music, through which he explores particularly Irish issues like language and history. He has worked with text by the poet Seamus Heaney, in the chamber piece Mad Sweeney (1996), and by the Irish-language writer Gabriel Rosenstock.²

Recent works include^1,2: Eight Haikus ( National Chamber Choir 2010 ) Songs Of Terror And Love to texts by Jacopone da Todi ( N.Y. 2010 ) Clarinet Quintet ( RTE commission 2009) 4 Orchestral Prayers for Mezzosoprano and Orchestra ( N.S.O. of Ireland 2010 ) "Quasi una Sarabanda" (Swiss Ensemble "Antipodes" 2009) "9 Pratoleva Pearls" (Andreas Skouras 2009) Sweeney's Smithereens (Crash Ensemble for Expo 2000) Mad Sweeney for Speaker and Chamber Orchestra ( Boston Musica Viva 2006 ) Sweeney's Total Rondo (G.P.A. International Piano Competition Dublin, 2003) RTE commission 2005 Quasi Una Visione (Ensemble Modern premiere at the Living Music Festival, Dublin 2005 ) Quasi Un Concertino ( Zagreb "Cantus" 2005 ) Quasi un Lamento for Chamber Orchestra (N.S.O. 2005) Quasi Un Pizzicato for Large Ensemble (Wireworks Ensemble Hamburg 2004 ) Quasi Un Canto for Large Orchestra ( Zagreb Philharmonic at the 2005 World Music Days ) Quasi Una Fuga for String Orchestra ( Irish Chamber Orchestra , Shannon Festival Limerick 2007) etc.

Earlier commissions include: Sweeney's Smithereens (Crash Ensemble for Expo 2000) Sweeney's Total Rondo (G.P.A. International 2003) Two Orchestrated Bach Fugues (National Concert Hall 2002), from the Cantus Chamber Orchestra, Zagreb, 2003 for the new Quasi Un Concertino RTE commission 2005 Quasi Una Visione for Orchestra (Ensemble Modern premiered at the Living Music Festival, Dublin ) Quasi un Lamento for Chamber Orchestra (N.S.O. Horizons Concert 2005) Quasi Un Pizzicato for Large Ensemble (Wireworks Ensemble Hamburg 2004 ) Quasi Un Canto for Large Orchestra (Zagreb Philharmonic at the 2005 World Music Days, Zagreb) in 2005, Quasi Una Fuga (for IPME ; premiere 26.11.2006, Irish Chamber Orchestra at the National Gallery, Dublin); in 2006, Beyond Beckett, for Soprano, Violin, Cello and Bassclarinet (for Concorde ; premiere 23.4.2006 at the Beckett Centenary Celebrations, National Gallery, Dublin) in 2007, Quasi Una Sarabanda (for the Swiss Ensemble “Antipodes”, in 2008, ” Four Orchestral Lieder” for the N.S.O., in 2009, Clarinet Quintet for RTE, etc.

Accomplishments

Corcoran has won a variety of awards throughout his career. Recent awards include:¹ StudioAkustische Kunst, Cologne, in 1995 (Joycepeak Music) Bourges International Electro-acoustic Music Competition in 1999 (Sweeney's Vision) EMS Prize, Stockholm, in 2002 (Quasi Una Missa)

He has been a member of Aosdana, the Irish Academy of the Arts which honours artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland, since its inception.

(1) www.frankcorcoran.com (2) http://aosdana.artscouncil.ie/Members/Music/Corcoran.aspx (3) http://www.cmc.ie/composers/composer.cfm?composerID=25