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Il Theatro della Memoria (NeoGrand Opera em Sete Atos) {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 02​:​14​:​27]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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I l T h e a t r o D e l l a M e m o r i a

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

- N e o G r a n d O p e r a I n 7 A c t s -

[duration 02:14:27] all rights reserved

Dedicated to Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος (Simonides of Ceos)


Phonartistic Creation idiosyncratically inspired by Theatre of Memory.

This is the Odyssey of - Italian renascentist - Giulio "Delminio" Camillo taking - ancient Roman philosopher, orator ... (Marcus Tullius) Cicero - as a guide, through 49 levels of omniscient scenical Machine. Musical score and concezione librettistica: O.M.

{Under the Melgacian cloak of directrix and freely radicalized in scuola metafisica art movement [Giorgio de Chirico (1888 – 1978)]: theatrical setting, scenery, costumes and dance.}


>> VIDE (in Portuguese)

Website - built by the artist - especially dedicated to its Offspring.
Sítio Eletrônico apendicioso à Ópera ´Il Theatro della Memoria´

{introdução histórica, contextualização, dados técnicos,
exegeses do autor e mais}

otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/theatrodellamemoria <<

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"Monumental smorgasbord of linguistic and sonic dialects; polysemic invention carrier of gigantic, genuine proportions (...) just like his creator, O.M., rightly declares: N-e-u-g-e-s-a-m-t-k-u-n-s-t-w-e-r-k. (...) Unique Work situated on the summit of contemporaneity!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Spellbinding! Indescribable harmonies; sweeping coloraturas/timbres; balanced and undulating tonalities/atonalities; meticulous flow into the stream of noises and silences; unexpected use of several languages (culminating in their own ´idiōma´)​; great tangle of voices; unusual randomness; amazing improvisations; unmatched creativity in engineering and sound design; spectral scenography; enigmatic costumes; metaphysical theme/plot; vaporous libretto et cetera etceteros - ´Il Theatro della Memoria´ by Melgaço is certainly a step forward in operistico concept! I have no doubt, we are witnessing an authentic genius!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Giulio "Delminio" Camillo (ca. 1480 – 1544) was an Italian philosopher. Was as well-known in his era as Bill Gates is now. Just like Gates he cherished a vision of a universal Storage and Retrieval System, and just like Microsoft Windows, his 'Theatre of Memory' was, despite constant revision, never completed. Camillo's legendary Theatre of Memory remained only a fragment, its benefits only an option for the future. When it was finished, the user - so he predicted - would have access to the knowledge of the whole universe. On account of his promising invention, Camillo's contemporaries called him 'the divine'. But he was forgotten immediately after his death. No trace is left of his spectacular databank - except a short treatise which he dictated on his deathbed and which was formulated in the future tense: 'L'Idea del Theatro' (1550).

It was only in the computer age that Camillo's name reappeared out of oblivion - at first sporadically in a few specialised articles in the fifties, then with increasing intensity and enthusiasm, until Camillo became a real hero of books and congresses, and even of television programmes and Internet appearances. How did the renaissance of this Renaissance encyclopaedist come about?

The catalyst was a chance occurrence: Ernst Gombrich, the director of the Warburg Institute in London gave Camillo's treatise to his colleague Frances Yates to read. She studied this short work thoroughly and was so fascinated that she not only brought the ‘Theatro' back to life in her mind's eye, but also made a reconstructional drawing of it in accordance with Camillo's instructions. The result formed the basis of a book on the history of the art of memory, which became one of the most influential works of cultural studies of recent decades. Further attempts at a reconstruction followed that of Yates, and their variety demonstrates how little we know about Camillo.

The objective knowledge we do have can be summarised very briefly. The structure was a wooden building, probably as large as a single room, constructed like a Vitruvian amphitheatre. The visitor stood on the stage and gazed into the auditorium, whose tiered, semicircular construction was particularly suitable for housing the memories in a clearly laid-out fashion - seven sections, each with seven arches spanning seven rising tiers. The seven sections were divided according to the seven planets known at the time - they represented the divine macrocosm of alchemical astrology. The seven tiers that rose up from them, coded by motifs from classical mythology, represented the seven spheres of the sublunary down to the elementary microcosm. On each of these stood emblematic images and signs, next to compartments for scrolls. Using an associative combination of the emblematically coded division of knowledge, it had to be possible to reproduce every imaginable micro and macrocosmic relationship in one's own memory. Exactly how this worked remains a mystery of the hermetic occult sciences on which Camillo based his notion.

(Peter Matussek / The Renaissance of the Theatre of Memory)

II - In the sixteenth century Giulio Camillo built a number of versions of his Theater of Memory. It consisted of a spatial installation of images through which the spectator could navigate freely, generating new meanings by making connections. Together, the images chosen by Camillo formed a model of the structure of the world (...) focussing on two of its aspects:

1. * navigation: the theater of memory is not a representation of the world which can be passively experienced; it is an active model, a system to move in and play with;

2. sensory reduction: the images in the theater of memory are not realistic, they are emblems or pictograms.

* (...) Navigation systems such as the classical art of memory, board games, Eisenstein’s ‘montage of attractions’, Bergson’s parallel between the human mind and the film projector, and contemporary phenomena such as hypermedia and virtual reality.

(Joost Rekveld / Mental versus Virtual Space: Camillo’s Theatre of Memory - Course for Artscience / Taught together with Michael van Hoogenhuyze)

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.

credits

released January 1, 2015

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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O t a c í l i o
M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | conducting | engineering & sound design | art design | production | direction}

Special Guests: Nausícaaa Ensemble | Zycluz Quartett | Célestine Alavoine | Amedeo Rizzi

Estúdio Yoknapotawpha/BR + Unidade Euromobile

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
from
Minas Gerais,
Brazil.
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Official (English) Site
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