C a p r i c c i o F o r E l E a z a r
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 32:32] all rights reserved
Dedicated to Eleazar de Carvalho
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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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"28 June 1912, date of Eleazar de Carvalho's birth, the great Brazilian Maestro. Exactly today, Mr. de Carvalho would complete one hundred and three years old. ´Capriccio for El Eazar´, in addition to pay homage to such strong personality of the global musical universe, it´s an overwhelming work! Proportional to the resounding example Eleazar gave us as an innate leader, rigorous regent, professor of stupendous conductors / prominent composers / outstanding concert performers plus an impressive bastion of contemporary music.
´The splendors of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil.´ (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
The brightness of this capricious sonic elegy is so intense that it can even blind us, but certainly not deafen - quite the opposite. Such Gargantuan brilliance unveils hearing and so our artistic perception opens, opens wide ... whimsically. Probably as Eleazar de Carvalho ditto left us his pointed legacy." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
"A Capriccio or Caprice is a piece of music, usually fairly free in form and of a lively character. The typical Capriccio is one that is fast, intense, and often virtuosic in nature.
The term ´Capriccio´ has been applied in disparate ways, covering works using many different procedures and forms, as well as a wide variety of vocal and instrumental forces. The earliest occurrence of the term was in 1561 by Jacquet de Berchem and applied to a set of madrigals. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, it could refer to madrigals, music intended alternatively for voices or instruments, or for strictly instrumental pieces, especially keyboard compositions.
Would have Otacílio Melgaço a certain predisposition to embrace stringed and keys instruments? I do not assert this however, in orchestral terms, stylistically he not always adopts brass elements. But that's exactly what he does now, underscoring the strength of metals and the temperament of his honoree. Here we can minutely absorb such cogent dimension of his creation. All this also added to woodwind apparatus and, in focused Caprice (citing ´especially keyboard´ extravaganza) an astonishing organ! The symphonic embodiment is lush and just like a tribute to Eleazar, could not be a more captivating and impactful Melgacian perspective.
[1- O.M. subdivides and renames ´El Eazar´, presumably reinforcing a reverential and peculiar connotation; 2- As well as the (almost) mythical album cover, revealing the majestic hand of a conductor: endowed with light, a type of divinizing gift; 3- Another detail is the yellowish skin tone against the background of a dark green subtle, mentioning the predominant colors in the Brazilian flag, playing spotlight - concurrently with its cosmopolitanism - in the same Brazilianness characteristically present in the E.C. posture.]
Are words of the Maestro de Carvalho: ´The conquest of contemporary music is the release of the need of the end point.´ A masterpiece of epic scope, this bracing Capriccio is a definite proof of that." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
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I - Eleazar de Carvalho (1912 – 1996) was a Brazilian conductor and composer.
De Carvalho's parents were Manuel Alfonso de Carvalho and Dalila Mendonça. He studied in the United States with Sergei Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center, and later became a conducting assistant to Koussevitzky, at the same time as Leonard Bernstein. He received a Ph.D. in music from Washington State University in 1963.
In Brazil, de Carvalho held principal conducting positions with the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira of Rio de Janeiro, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Orquestra Sinfônica do Recife, Orquestra Sinfônica da Paraiba and also with the Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre. In the United States, his major post was as music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO), from 1963 to 1968. During his Saint Louis tenure, he was noted as a champion of contemporary music. He also conducted the first SLSO performances of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Ludwig van Beethoven's Missa solemnis, and the Grande messe des morts of Hector Berlioz.
De Carvalho taught at Hofstra University and the Juilliard School of Music. In 1987, he joined the music faculty of Yale University as a professor and as conductor-in-residence. He became emeritus at Yale in 1994. De Carvalho was a teacher to such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, Gustav Meier, Seiji Ozawa, Jose Serebrier, and David Zinman;
II - De Carvalho was married to Jocy de Oliveira - a Brazilian pianist, multimedia artist and composer.
...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.
