Works
Corner became interested in calligraphy during military service in Korea in 1960-1961 and studied it with Ki-sung Kim; it is often incorporated into his scores. While there he became enamored with Korean traditional music, particularly the jeongak composition Sujecheon, which he describes as "the most beautiful piece of music in the history of the world." Many of his scores are open-ended in that some elements are specified, but others are left partially or entirely to the discretion of the performers. Some employ standard notation, whereas others are graphic scores, text scores, etc. His music also frequently explores unintentional sound, chance activities, minimalism, and non-Western instruments and tuning systems. Improvisation is important, though not exclusive; some "performance proposals" lead to a kind of ecstatic semi-trance. Contact with artists in other media, especially dance and the visual arts, as well as a long-standing interest in Eastern religions such as Buddhism (Zen) and study of the music of composers from the Baroque and Pre-Baroque eras has likewise impacted his music.
Representative works include the ensemble pieces Passionate Expanse of the Law, Sang-teh/Situations and Through the Mysterious Barricade, among many others. Also in his incredibly large oeuvre are piano pieces (perfect, Pictures of Pictures from Pictures of Pictures), choral works (Peace, be still), electronic music (the war cantata Oracle), and more than 400 works in the Gamelan series, to mention only some of his catalogue. He divides his output into five periods, each one reflective of his attitudes at the time:
- Culture, 1950s
- The World, 1960s and 1970s
- Mind, 1970s and 1980s
- Body, 1980s and 1990s
- Spirit; Soul, 1999–present
Frog Peak Music, a Composer's Collective, has undertaken to make as much as possible of his opera omnia available by on-order photocopy publication.
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“My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.”
—Hannah More (1745–1833)
“In all Works of This, and of the Dramatic Kind, STORY, or AMUSEMENT, should be considered as little more than the Vehicle to the more necessary INSTRUCTION.”
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“Only the more uncompromising of the mystics still seek for knowledge in a silent land of absolute intuition, where the intellect finally lays down its conceptual tools, and rests from its pragmatic labors, while its works do not follow it, but are simply forgotten, and are as if they never had been.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)