A r s S u b t i l i o r

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 31:42] all rights reserved

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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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"Ars Subtilior (´More Subtle Art´) is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered on Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory. Often the term is used in contrast with ars nova, which applies to the musical style of the preceding period from about 1310 to about 1370; though some scholars prefer to consider the ars subtilior a subcategory of the earlier style. Primary sources for the ars subtilior are the Chantilly Codex, the Modena Codex (Mod A M 5.24), and the Turin Manuscript (Torino J.II.9).

Manuscripts of works in the ars subtilior occasionally were themselves in unusual and expressive shapes, as a form of eye music. As well as Baude Cordier's circular canon and the heart-shaped score, Jacob Senleches's La Harpe de melodie is written in the shape of a harp. To create such wraparound sound Pieces, Mr. Melgaço relied on several plastic molds, translating his perception of geometer (and also visual artist) into its sonic confines.

The photograph on the cover of the album proves this. There´s a relationship - deliberate or not - with some very specific paintings by the Belgian René Magritte. For example,

´The Tomb of the Wrestlers´
[> www.renemagritte.org/images/paintings/the-tomb-of-the-wrestlers.jpg <]

and

´The Listening Room´
[> www.renemagritte.org/the-listening-room.jsp#prettyPhoto[image1]/0/ <]

have a kinship with the surreal (it´s not a montage, is a veridical) image that heads this remarkable discographic prole. Undoubtedly, not only one of the settings of the scores used but also a creative metaphorical representation (by the proportions adopted, endowed with exciting irony) aimed at a ´more subtle Art´.

According to Francis Bacon, ´the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.´ Facing a natural creation of Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Otacílio Melgaço, yes, we´ll need our senses and understanding (to feel it, to comprehend it), and so, consequently, be closer to our (always grubable) human nature. And far beyond. Like ´Ars Subtilior´ can fascinatingly reveal to us." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"Musically, the productions of the ars subtilior are highly refined, complex, difficult to sing, and probably were produced, sung and enjoyed by a small audience of specialists and connoisseurs. Hoppin suggests the superlative ars subtilissima, saying, ´not until the twentieth century did music again reach the most subtle refinements and rhythmic complexities of the manneristic style.´ They are almost exclusively secular songs, and have as their subject matter love, war, chivalry, and stories from classical antiquity. There are even some songs written in praise of public figures (for example Antipope Clement VII).

Daniel Albright compares avant-garde and modernist music of the 20th century's ´emphasis on generating music through technical experiment´ to the precedent set by the ars subtilior movement's ´autonomous delight in extending the kingdom of sound.´ He cites Baude Cordier's perpetual canon Tout par compas (All by compass am I composed), notated on a circular staff. Albright contrasts this motivation with ´expressive urgency´ and ´obedience to rules of craft´ and, indeed, ars subtilior was coined by musicologist Ursula Günther in 1960 to avoid the negative connotations of the terms manneristic style and mannered notation. (Günther's coinage was based on references in Tractatus de diversis figuris, attributed to Philippus de Caserta, to composers moving to a style ´post modum subtiliorem comparantes´ and developing an ´artem magis
subtiliter´.)

It´s precisely from this possible intercrossing of polysemic perspectives, corroborating the prism of O.M. that sets out from the ´avant-garde and modernist music of the 20th century´ towards his (already pulsating with the heart of the 21th) sophisticated timelessness. Apropos, ´autonomous delight in extending the kingdom of sound´ is an impeccable way of describing - what I would call - a ´Melgacian Motto´ and of which we´re privileged beneficiaries.

Four compositions, autonomous but intercommunicating, having, with the exception of an acupuncturist percussive touch and some poematic voices, the strings as an instrumentistic platform. ´Highly refined, complex´, but were not given to light to the (even if collateral) singing (except for a punctual recitation, in the third track). This decision, in my point of view, was wise because there´s the metalanguage: not ´love, war, chivalry, or stories from classical antiquity´ but Art having Itself as thematic. Therefore, to describe
what´s in principle indescribable: better musical notes than words; is more appropriate the artistic language itself than the vernacular code.

Strings that sometimes stretch like long-lasting notes, such as serpents in arabesque (each metallic ophidian: a violin and viola and cello vibrating cord) crossing a whole nocturnal desert; a sound landscape of keen, penetrating, pervasive extraordinary shades. Strings that are sometimes, under metamorphic effects, purely experimental; proposing bold, cosmogonic rhythmicities in their irrepressible expansiveness. Ars Subtilissima! Magis magicis!

After all, Ladies and Gentlemen,

A r s
e s t
c e l a r e
a r t e m!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - One of the centers of activity of the style was Avignon at the end of the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy and during the Great Schism (1378–1417), the time during which the Western Church had a pope both in Rome and in Avignon. The town on the Rhône had developed into an active cultural center, and produced the most significant surviving body of secular song of the late fourteenth century.

The style spread into northern Spain and as far as Cyprus (which was a French cultural outpost at the time). French, Flemish, Spanish and Italian composers used the style;

II - The main composers of the ars subtilior (those from whom at least three compositions in this style are known) are Anthonello de Caserta, Johannes Cunelier, Egidius, Galiot, Matheus de Perusio, Philipoctus de Caserta, Jacob Senleches, and Trebor. Other composers associated with the style include:

Johannes Ciconia, La flamma del to amor (Lucca, f.54v)
Baude Cordier, Tout par compas (Rondeau-canon)
Martinus Fabri
Paolo da Firenze
Guido de Lange, Dieux gart (Rondeau)
Johannes Symonis Hasprois
Matteo da Perugia
Matheus de Sancto Johanne
Solage, Fumeux fume par fumée (Rondeau)
Antonio Zacara da Teramo
Anonymous composers at the Nicosia court of King Janus of Cyprus

...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.