DOKTOR FAUSTUS ODER ADRIAN LEVERKÜHN WEHEKLAG, ERZÄHLT VON MEPHISTOPHELES - APOCALIPSIS OPERETTE

OTACÍLIO MELGAÇO

[duration 01:12:15] 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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"VERTIGINOUS, HALLUCINATORY, LYSERGIC,
APOTHEOTIC M-A-S-T-E-R-P-I-E-C-E!
Eccentric, complex, challenging, unexpected, iconoclastic, unsettling, uncomfortable, vicious, anesthetizing, benumbing, psychotropic, strange, bizarre, exotic, perverse, redemptive, ..., overmuch human or, how do we know?:
i-n-h-u-m-a-n?

I am convinced that we´re witnessing a turning point of great Art given birth in Contemporaneity! But my judgment may not be interpreted bombastically, please. Significant changes in the history are made this way: (turning) point to (turning) point.

Just as, in respective time and even today, ´Finnegans Wake´ by James Joyce is considered both a vertex as a dead end/cul-de-sac: the work here focused (mainly by the salutary challenger uneasiness caused and everything that splendidly supports it) also can be seen thereby! And this phenomenon to me is more than laudatory; is the maximum power that ´earth-born expression´ has - toward permanently seal the apogee that Humanity has to achieve. Henceforth, we return, or, if we try to go further, the potential disconnexion is unimaginable.

Disconnection as a rupture salubrious with the paradigms, concepts, codes, customs, vocabularies, ... in short, all the artistic-aesthetic-cultural epicenter with which we are accustomed (or from which we become hostages customarily) - even if consider the extreme limits. Perhaps also by being aware of this fact, the creator O.M. placed the creature in the future?

Doctor Faustus or The Lamentation of Adrian Leverkühn, Told by Mephistopheles - Apocalipsis Operetta. Ambitious enterprise perpetrated by Otacílio Melgaço.

´Doctor Faustus is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde.´

Would be difficult to try to enumerate how many innovations are present here. I will cite only some of the most explicit:

1- ´Operettas are usually shorter than operas, and are usually of a light and amusing character. Operettas are often considered less ´serious´ than operas.´ Despite maintaining his operetta shorter than an opera, other conventions are absolutely perverted by O.M.

´Topical satire is a feature common to many operettas. However, satire is used in some ´serious´ operas.´ Otacílio maintains a dual perspective. While running through his creation as a tragedy high to extreme, on the other hand could we consider it a satire? I suppose so. One of polysemic antics of the Brazilian creator.

´Normally some of the libretto of an operetta is spoken rather than sung. Instead of moving from one musical number to another, the musical segments — e.g. aria, recitative, chorus — are interspersed with periods of dialogue. There is usually no musical accompaniment to the dialogue, although sometimes some musical themes are played quietly under it. Short passages of recitative are, however, sometimes used in operetta, especially as an introduction to a song.´ While appropriating some spoken passages in light of the original prosodic prism (Zeitblom), it´s noted that O.M. subverts typicalities of operettas in a surprising way;

2- Melgaço carries the plot to the Becoming; we can ratify it through the characteristic timbre of the voices. It´s a futuristic masterpiece and hence the term apocalipsis/apocalypse;

3- Although it´s noticeable that the adopted language is German, the composer becomes unintelligible - most of the time. He suggests us a phantasmic libretto! May we all draw our own conclusions about this interesting gimmick. I believe that the metaphorical power of this enlightened choice of Melgaço is overwhelming;

4- A very important detail (in fact, is not a mere detail): at times when Mephisto opens his mouth, considering the idiosyncrasies of each interpretation - there are different voices. From male to female, from deep-toned to high-toned, ie broadly deep to high / high to deep;

5- Still giving meaning to the colloquial Serenus, the conjunctural narration is all ´in the lips of´ Mephistopheles. Under His rule. If the robotic verb is exploited by others or by Himself, is the Mephistophelian point of view presented to us. Finally, we can enjoy His version. Someone should give Him such ´opportunity´ - seems to me that such right always was stolen from Him; was time to meet such mystical and historical claim, no? Another metaphorical brilliance offered by Otacílio. Someone should provide the confessional thread skein for Him unprecedented. Melgaço does, Melgaço commits it;

6- Cybernated voices - not cease to be a warning against the growing dehumanization current planetary, agree? In my view, exaggerated abduction by an onitechnology (compromising interrelationships; entombing predicates such as empathy, compassion...); the imminence of a new cold war; worrying armed conflicts that use religion as figurehead; fermented xenophobia; rhizomic terrorism; the power of the financial world above all things (personal, political, social ... dimensions) and so on. Resuming the appearance of cybernated voices, for some - this may be a factor of estrangement - in principle. But if you allow yourself to enter into the work, will find it a fascinating and intriguing feature - and it just brings more aesthetic richness and sensory challenge to the listener. And, of course, is strategically an element that references time and space.

There´s much more to be said...

Thomas Mann's last great novel (check out the full summary at the end of the page) is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil. Highlighting the carat of this melgacian Operetta, I am sure that Otacílio - by bringing to the fore today ´Doctor Faustus´ - extrapolates Deutschland (the historical context is another) and now considers the W-o-r-l-d to sell the soul!
Melgaço's protagonist is, consequently, Mephistopheles. Mann's protagonist, the composer Adrian Leverkühn, is the flower of German culture, a brilliant, isolated, overreaching figure, his radical new music a breakneck game played by art at the very edge of impossibility. In return for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical accomplishment, he bargains away his soul - and the ability to love his fellow man.

DOKTOR FAUSTUS ODER ADRIAN LEVERKÜHN WEHEKLAG, ERZÄHLT VON MEPHISTOPHELES - APOCALIPSIS OPERETTE really makes me, for the first time, imagine how audible would be a dialogue between a human and the Devil. As would be audible from our perspective. The witnesses. The mystery, the incomprehensible, astonishing, magnificent!

Otacílio Melgaço has become an expert at translating the untranslatable; maybe - and I ratify it without hesitation - bring to the musical form what would be inaudible! This masterpiece is an unquestionable and Melgamephistophelean proof!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"Once in a rare interview, Otacílio Melgaço said that his sound Pieces are cathedrals built in slow motion before our ears. Him, an iconoclast, is probably a builder who destroys his creation and then will erect it again and again and again. From dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.
He recalled Schoenberg. Arnold uttered that had the ability to see through walls. Melgaço said, about himself, he would rather not see but hear through them. And now let us hear through O.M. one of the most stunning epiphanies - as an ´Apocalipsis Operetta´ - brought to light in the XXI century.

Thomas Mann ´made a study of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose career including the supposed contracting of syphilis followed by complete mental collapse in 1889 at the height of his creative life prophesying the 'Anti-Christ', and his death in 1900, do present a pattern imitated in Leverkühn. The illnesses of Delius and Wolf also resonate here.´

Syphilitic madness (Adrian was a syphilitic) and the pact with Mephisto go hand in hand. By the way, the search for exact illness and genius too. ´Genius is a form of the life force that is deeply versed in illness, that both draws creatively from it and creates through it.´ (Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus)

If we consider that g-e-n-i-u-s means brilliance, intelligence, intellect, ability, cleverness, brains, erudition, wisdom, fine mind, artistry, flair; talent, gift, flair, aptitude, facility, knack, bent, ability, expertise, capacity, faculty, strength, forte, brilliance, skill, artistry
also has d-e-m-o-n synonymously.

The timbre of the voices may be a direct effect of syphilis - not for those who speak (Mr. Leverkühn is the exception; he was already carrying the disease) but for those who listen! One of several possible genialities coming from melgacian scope! Because so he (Melgaço) makes all listeners also syphilitic, then all become receptacles of genius! And what is even more fantastic, Otacílio makes the listeners, demonic listeners! In this context, we are all Mephistopheles!

Maybe the mental breakdown of Adrian makes all voices indeed almost incomprehensible. Now we're not talking the language of men anymore... Maybe the whole context that opens Melgaço - reveals a requirement for greater comprehension; a higher and higher understanding on our part. Literally transcendent.

Simultaneously O.M., musically, transplants for even the timbre of instruments an another level of absorption. Thus, we can state that he generates new means to express your inspiration transforming sound avatars in other sonic generators - metamorphosed. So in addition to create his own terrific glossary, the composer and instrumentalist interferes in our conditions (aesthetic, perceptual, sensory, intuitive, philosophical, cognitive, analytical, ..., and - I would say yet - organic) to listen his artistic offspring. Auscultate!

Sinuous combinations that performs Melgaço are always amazing. Beyond the so-called contemporary music, certainly. His sound experiments should win the effigy Timeless, undoubtedly. Past, present and future are related as in a sacred copulation. Or Mephistophelean. Triadic copulation generating a Timelessness that makes the music of O.M.: an irresistible flow. More: which ´safe conduct´ this flow gives to the artist? Being able to flirt with the legacy of exceptional artists, like Paul Thomas Mann or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Christopher Marlowe or Ferruccio Busoni, who at least flirts should have an equal stature. We are facing the corroboration that.

Completing the melgacian complexity in vogue, there are occasional quotes from icons of (Austro-)German culture throughout his titanic Piece. From Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart to Arnold Schoenberg; from (inevitable repeat them) Goethe to Mann himself...

We are contemplating a work of art simultaneously visceral and animistic. We are faced with perennial themes and storylines already, I say. Melgaço and his peculiar Gesamtkunstwerk. But in which possible perspectives a work of art today (under the aegis of ´contemporary Man´) will be inserted?

´There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today.´ (Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus)

It´s not sell our souls to Mephisto what interests Melgaço. What he wants, I think, and proposes is that we sell our souls to the art. To the great Art. An Art that will only be legitimized for us when our bodies and minds and souls are offering. We must realize that such a phrase is no mere figure of speech. I pity those that allow contemporary ordinary life steal them the power to become the highest human beings through the enjoyment of great Art.

Yes, DOKTOR FAUSTUS ODER ADRIAN LEVERKÜHN WEHEKLAG, ERZÄHLT VON MEPHISTOPHELES - APOCALIPSIS OPERETTE and other melgacian works belong to this auspicious rise. Awakening and ascension.

The artistic concoction of Otacílio is futuristic. He uses this allegory not only as part of his distinctive rereading. Somehow O.M. passes a message to us. Put the pen in the hands of Mephistopheles and connect it and him with the times to come: there is a clear errand given (through his gift, the Art) by Mr. Melgaço, I realize as a warning. And I am referring to all Humanity. What is it? At a minimum, we should figure out how to take charge of our destiny. While there´s still time... While there´re still souls...

´To allow only the kind of art that the average man understands is the worst small-mindedness and the murder of mind and spirit. It is my conviction that the intellect can be certain that in doing what most disconcerts the crowd, in pursuing the most daring, unconventional advances and explorations, it will in some highly indirect fashion serve man - and in the long run, all men.´ (Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus)

Even if (and preferably) incomparably Melgapocalyptic, so be it!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - Paul Thomas Mann (1875 – 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

II - ´Doctor Faustus´ is constructed in richly allusive and symbolic terms. H.T. Lowe-Porter refers to the three strands of the book: 'the German scene from within, and its broader, its universal origins; the depiction of an art not German alone but vital to our whole civilization; music as one instance of the arts and the state in which the arts find themselves today [sc. 1949]; and, finally, the invocation of the daemonic.' (Translator's note, vi.)

III - Mann's characters are composites, not specific counterparts to individuals. Where names do seem to allude to real persons (such as Spengler, to Oswald Spengler, or Kridwiss, to Ernst Kris) Mann is echoing in their names the philosophies and intellectual standpoints of their time (of which he was a part) without intending portraits or impersonations of the real persons. The homoerotic character of the violinist Rudi Schwerdtfeger is modelled on Paul Ehrenberg of Dresden, an admired friend of Thomas Mann's.

In preparation for the work, Mann studied musicology and biographies of major composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, Hugo Wolf, Franz Schreker and Alban Berg. He communicated with living composers, including Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and Hanns Eisler. In the death of the child there is an echo (appropriately) of the death of Mahler's daughter, after he had (in Alma's opinion) tempted fate by setting the Kindertotenlieder.

In Chapter XXII Leverkühn develops the twelve-tone technique or row system, which was actually invented by Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg lived near Mann in Los Angeles as the novel was being written. He was very annoyed by this appropriation without his consent, and later editions of the novel included an Author's Note at the end acknowledging that the technique was Schoenberg's intellectual property, and that passages of the book dealing with musical theory are indebted in many details to Schoenberg's Harmonielehre.

IV - A most important and direct contribution came from the philosopher and music critic Theodor Adorno, who acted as Mann's adviser and encouraged him to rewrite large sections of the book. Mann also read chapters to groups of invited friends (a method also used by Kafka) to test the effect of the text. He wrote, "Zeitblom is a parody of myself. Adrian's mood is closer to my own than one might – and ought to – think."

V - SUMMARY. DOCTOR FAUSTUS. By William Stewart.

The novel recounts the story of Adrian Leverkühn, a brilliant composer whose art is aesthetically groundbreaking yet intellectually cold. The events of Leverkühn’s life are told by his childhood friend, the philologist Serenus Zeitblom, who juxtaposes the narrative of the composer with news of Germany’s involvement in World War II, news that grows dimmer through the course of the novel. Zeitblom begins at their childhood in the small village of Kaisersaschern, and follows their progression through primary and secondary education into the University. Although Leverkühn studies theology, his passion is for music, and he demonstrates an intuitive genius for composition from a young age.

Leverkühn ultimately abandons theology for music and its mystical rationalism. In a scene key to his development as an artist, the composer becomes involved with a prostitute and contracts syphilis. This event serves as the source for Leverkühn’s musical inspiration, compulsion, genius, sickness, and ultimate downfall and death. While working on music based on Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, Leverkühn receives a visit from a shadowy, satanic figure who promises him twenty four years of musical genius in exchange for his rejection of love. The Faust legend is echoed here, the visitor functioning as a Mephistopheles to the composer. As evidenced here, Mann creates a feeling of depth and complexity through his constant deployment of inter- and intra-textual allusions.

Mann devotes a large portion of the novel to the discussion of the society that springs up around Leverkühn during his period of artistic brilliance. By the end of the novel, Leverkühn has surrounded himself with an array of intellectuals who represent a series of bourgeois stereotypes and all of whom come under ironic scrutiny from Mann. As the novel moves to its close, the composer spirals deeper into sickness and madness. Leverkühn exhibits strong impulses towards love, but they only appear to verify the terms of his Faustian pact. His attempts to take a wife are disastrous: he is not only rejected, but his proposal begins a bizarre chain of events that culminates in the death of one of Adrian’s closest friends, Rudi Schwerdtfeger.

The awful possibility of the satanic pact’s validity continues to haunt Leverkühn until the very end of the narrative. Soon after the death of Schwerdtfeger, Leverkühn’s nephew, Nepomuk, comes to live with the composer. His innocence charms Leverkühn, but tragically, the child falls ill with meningitis and dies a slow, excruciating death. The composer blames himself for the fate of the child, believing that the love he demonstrated toward Nepomuk violated his satanic agreement and brought about the child’s demise.

In the novel’s final scene, Leverkühn assembles his friends and colleagues for a performance of his masterwork, The Lamentation of Dr. Faustus. Prefacing the performance with a few remarks about its composition and meaning, Leverkühn speaks of the satanic contract, visits from demonic children, and supernatural inspiration. The extent of his insanity, most likely a result of the syphilis he contracted early on, unsettles the members of the salon, and they all leave except Zeitblom and a few others. Leverkühn is unable to perform the piece, instead collapsing with a groan over the piano as he attempts to strike the first chord. The composer’s mental condition degrades steadily into total incapacitation over the next ten years, during which time he is cared for by his mother and occasionally visited by Zeitblom.

...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.