e n t e l é k h e i a

- d i x
b e r c e u s e s
à A r i s t o t e
c o m m e
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e n f a n t -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:01:27] 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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"´A Berceuse is ´a musical composition usually in 6/8 time that resembles a lullaby.´ Otherwise it is typically in triple meter. Tonally most berceuses are simple, often merely alternating tonic and dominant harmonies; since the intended effect is to put a baby to sleep, wild chromaticism would be somewhat out of character. Another characteristic of the berceuse, for no reason other than convention, is a tendency to stay on the ´flat side´; noted examples including the berceuses by Chopin, who pioneered the form, Liszt, and Balakirev, which are all in D♭.´ The Melgacian concept of lullaby is not conventional, that's right. Sometimes the metric is respected, sometimes not. Sometimes the tone is simple, sometimes not. Sometimes there´s the ´flat side´, sometimes ´other sides´ are adopted. Entelēs (ἐντελής, ´complete, full-grown´), Echein (= hexis, to be a certain way by the continuing effort of holding on in that condition), Endelecheia (ἐντελέχεια, ´persistence´) and Telos (τέλος, ´completion´) are also sides of this quaint Otacílio´s sound work.

There´s an interesting detail: even as Melgaço creates pieces of phenomenal proportions, he also demonstrates how is an expert in generating very short compositions - some with less than a minute. Another nicety is, from a sonority unnameable that becomes magma in this work, we´re faced with a particular use of other instruments (so atypical in the exclusive context quoted) as the gong and the piano. Only the mentality of a ´joueur d'échecs´ to find the exact point of each insertion, providing us meticulous surprises.

It's no surprise to you that Morpheus is a god of dreams who appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Has the ability to mimic any human form and appear in dreams. His true semblance is that of a winged daemon, imagery shared with many of his siblings. Morpheusian is, somehow, the embodiment of O.M. in
´e n t e l é k h e i a - dix berceuses à Aristote comme un enfant -´. Morpheus is a son of Somnus. In Greek mythology,
H-y-p-n-o-s (or Somnus) was the personification of sleep. The ten lullabies here highlighted (and its indescribable
h-y-p-n-o-t-i-c timbres) are not restricted to deliver babies in the welcoming hands of good dreams. If there´s a child for whom the hearing of these parts is dedicated, is Aristotle. But we have to imagine him when at a young age; are able to build on our minds as would be the Greek philosopher and scientist - born in the Macedonian city of Stagirus, in 384 BCE - at the time of still hear lullabies? The ´dix berceuses´ here highlighted forsooth are not restricted to deliver babies in the welcoming hands of good dreams... Are geared to the archetype of Childhood (precisely ´Aristote comme un enfant´), fertile territory for bright dreams and also full of darkness (the darkness of another uterus now) - perplexed onirical spaces - because this is how should be, under the conception of Otacílio Melgaço, lullabies:
De caelo;
De anima;
De mundo;
De spiritu;
De sensu et sensibilibus;
De lineis insecabilibus;
De somno et vigilia;
De insomniis;
De divinatione per somnum;
De audibilibus;
Mirabilibus auscultationibus!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.´ (Aristotle)

Potentiality and actuality.

´Entelechy in Aristotelian philosophy, is the full and complete realization of a trend, potentiality or natural purpose, concluding a transformative process of any animate or inanimate being in the universe. It´s the being in act, that is, fully realized, as opposed to being in potency. Aristotle speaks of 'entelechy' in contrast to the Platonic theory of ideas and argues that every being develops from an internal final cause to him - and not, as Plato said, for external reasons ideals. Entelechy would therefore be the tension of an organism to perform according to its own laws, passing from potency to act.´

Now he is flirting the being in act with falling asleep...

Otacílio Melgaço had dealt with this question in another work:
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/serendipity-or-in-praise-of-sleep-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-1-26-25

Flirting the being in act with falling asleep...

The being in act with a child. ´Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.´

With a child being put to sleep.

Therefore: A child listening to lullabies. The resumption of a ´state of infancy´ is suggested, then. State that is a flood of inventiveness, creativity, curiosity; lack of lines anchoring and cloisters. Maybe that's the prime way to get to the internal final cause... Like a key that will enable the circuit to completeness. And, added to this: dormant, as if there was a ´dream act´ previous to empirical realization. After the potentiality and prior to (awakened faction of) actuality. Is fascinating! Here's what I try to grasp from this Melgacian phonograph album. Perhaps, under the lights of the so-called rationality, sounds a bit unorthodox and this makes it even more ravishing! There´s no great genius without a mixture of madness - and here assuredly I call ´madness´: a higher clarity! In the end, I think it all sidereal sounds contained therein are forms of hope. And so I can not forget a special sentence of Aristotle - already an adult -: ´Hope … is a waking dream.´" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Some historical Berceuses

Wiegenlied (Brahms), a cradle song, is a berceuse; it is better known in English as Brahms's Lullaby

Berceuse de Jocelyn, a tender lullaby from the opera "Jocelyn" by Benjamin Godard

Berceuse (Chopin), "cradle song" for piano, composed by Frédéric Chopin

Berceuse de Jupiter, also known as the aria "Que Les Songes Heureux" from the opera "Philémon et Baucis", by Charles Gounod

One of the excerpts from The Firebird Suite, a ballet composed by Igor Stravinsky

Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré by Maurice Ravel for violin and piano

Compositions by Ferruccio Busoni
Berceuse (in C major) Op. 2, for piano
Berceuse (Lullaby), for piano
Berceuse élégiaque

Berceuse, by Frank Bridge, is a piece for cello and piano

Berceuse for Violin and Piano in D major, Op. 16, by Gabriel Fauré

"Berceuse" section of Dolly Suite for Piano four-hands, Op. 56, No. 1, by Fauré. Sometimes transcribed for violin and piano; not to be confused with Fauré's Op. 16.

Berceuse for Solo Piano in A flat Major, Op. 72, No. 2, by Tchaikovsky

"Berceuse for the Infant Jesu" in A Little Suite for Christmas, by George Crumb

Grieg Lyric Pieces Op. 38 No. 1

Berceuse Heroique, for piano, by Claude Debussy

Berceuse for an Unwanted Child (Reginald Foresythe) 1934

Berceuse (sur les paroles classiques), from 24 Pieces in Free Style, for organ, by Louis Vierne

Berceuse pour deux notes qui cornent (for two notes which continue), for organ, JA 7, by Jehan Alain;

II - Terms derived from "dunamis" and "energeia" have become parts of modern scientific vocabulary with a very different meaning from Aristotle's. The original meanings are not used by modern philosophers unless they are commenting on classical or medieval philosophy. In contrast, "entelecheia", in the form of "entelechy" is a word used much less in technical senses in recent times.

As mentioned above, the concept had occupied a central position in the metaphysics of Leibniz, and is closely related to his monad in the sense that each sentient entity contains its own entire universe within it. But Leibniz use of this concept influenced more than just the development of the vocabulary of modern physics. Leibniz was also one of the main inspirations for the important movement in philosophy known as German Idealism, and within this movement and schools influenced by it entelechy may denote a force propelling one to self-fulfillment.

...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.