C o r t i l e D e i G e n t i l i

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 39:55] 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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"´Cortile Dei Gentili´, above all, is a Piece dedicated to percussion. Sunny Murray offers us an interesting testimony: ´I was able to interpret (...) the deep sound of percussion and manipulate it, get a third sound out of things.´ It´s with this 'third sound' (as the third bank of a river) that Otacílio Melgaço gives us the sonic Grace. Or the enchantment, rapture, impetuosity, ecstasy.

Under the epidermis of such predicates as magnificent as righteous, another quote that comes in handy was told by John Cage. ´I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, ´You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.´ I said, ´Well then, I'll beat my head against that wall.´ I quite literally began hitting things, and developed a music of percussion that involved noises.´ O.M. dominates the harmonic universe but he does not give up ´beating our heads against the walls´ and so bring down any obstacle between us and a higher perception of sounds and its intricacies. Gracefully, infatuatedly, ravishingly, impetuously, ecstatically!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"In Latin, L'Atrium Gentium. The ´Courtyard of the Gentiles´ evokes the homonymous space in the old Temple of Jerusalem, hosted non-Jews.

As is known, the Temple of Jerusalem (Herod's Temple) was made up of different spaces, which, in a way, reflected the Palestine itself of social organization. There was the court of the priests, the Israeli court for men, the patio for women and courtyard of the Gentiles.
The courtyard: The courtyard is not a permanent space of experience; It´s a transition space. Life in this context happens in houses, palaces, even in the temple. The Patio is a frontier to be exceeded.
A human being who is in the court, survives of what happens in the courtyard. He takes his condition on the sidelines of the house, outside the temple. Is character a fixed unchangeable condition. On the other hand, the patio is the place of manifestation of grace and the blessings of God. Thus, the courtyard is a place of passage, such as Easter. From death to life, from slavery to freedom, sorry to joy, immutable condition to processing.

Exposed the historical context, this is the meaning that permeates all the - here focused - impactful work of Melgaço. Primarily under a contemporary perspective, 1- The urgently needed space of tolerance and acceptance among distinct cultures and ethnicities; 2- Before representativeness that should be reviewed - the right to expressions/manifestations/claims (political, social, artistic, etc.) of the people, to assume the rein of its destinies; 3- Metaphor to territoriality of all that cries out for multi-connotative transcendence.

Again, without being pamphleteer, Mr. Melgaço masterfully translates musically current pertinent panoramas (concerning a globalized world but still not supportive and that rarely welcomes differences) aiming to awaken the best of each of us. As citizens, as human beings." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

[Post Scriptum - "There´s another particular side that catches my eye (& ears). I think there´s also a criticism focused on the power that certain agglomerations garnered taking as its starting point the virtual niche. We all know how the Internet can be turned into a platform for constructive and the most destructive people. And since this irreversible phenomenon transforms the real world (as indistinguishable from digital) in every way - the most auspicious, the most heinous. As it has become affordable, for example, praise worthy civilizing values, and make virulent moral lynching. The ´Court of the Gentiles´ can embrace this dubious face of collective masses - sometimes evolutionary, sometimes barbaric. Not enough achievements offered through frantic technologies as a universal democratization factor. Can be arenas for extremism, sectarianism, sexism, racism, terrorism etc. Our attention and actions must be alert to the dubious north indicated by this ambiguous compass. Bringing up its percussive resonance (it´s no coincidence that seems to flirt with Boschian symbolisms and Orffian echoes), the Melgacian ´Cortile Dei Gentile´ also has existence, I believe, in order to not make us forget that." (C.C.)]

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I - This phonograph record is not liturgical but as the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist has always maintained an independent position of doctrines, we can reap a vast metaphorical polysemy. The colonnades surrounded the large area called the Court of the Gentiles, so called because it allowed the Gentiles to enter it. It was there that Jesus, on two occasions, one more to the beginning and the other at the end of his earthly ministry, expelled those who had made the house of his Father a trading house. - John 2: 13-17; Mt 21:12, 13; Mr 11: 15-18.

There were several patios for which was going to go to the main building, the sanctuary itself. Each successive courtyard had higher degree of holiness. Passing through the Court of the Gentiles, one encountered a wall three cubits (1.30 m) tall, with openings for passage. At the top were large stones that bore a warning in Greek and Latin. The Greek inscription reads (second right translation): "Let no foreigner exceeds the barrier and the fence around the sanctuary. Anyone caught doing so will be responsible for his death will come as a consequence. "(The New Westminster Dictionary of the Bible [The New Bible Dictionary Westminster], edited by H. Gehman, 1970, p. 932.) The riot It involved the apostle Paul in the temple was because the Jews spread the rumor that he had brought a Gentile into the prohibited area. This wall we are brought to mind, although Paul used the term "wall" symbolically, when we read that Christ "destroyed the wall" that separated Jew from Gentile. - Ephesians 2:14 n; Acts 21: 20-32;

II - "Court of the Gentiles" is a new structure of the Vatican for dialogue with non-believers. "Believers and nonbelievers are in different territories, but should not be shut down in a sacred or secular isolation, ignoring, or worse, casting mockery and mutual accusations, as they would wish the fundamentalists of one and elsewhere" said the Chairman of the Board Pontifical Culture, Italian Cardinal D. Gianfranco Ravasi.

...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.