E r e t t o I n M e m o r i a ( C a n t a t a S p i r i t u a l e )

D i t t i c o - I I - C o m b u s t i o n e S p o n t a n e a

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 48:01] 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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"There have been unconfirmed anecdotal reports of people spontaneously combusting. This alleged phenomenon is not considered true spontaneous combustion, as supposed cases have been largely attributed to the wick effect, whereby an external source of fire ignites nearby flammable materials and human fat or other sources.

People spontaneously combusting. Explicitly the title of the second part of the Diptych is a poignant metaphor. This reinforces the voracious criticism that the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist does about the repeated tragedies (>> www.cfr.org/migration/europes-migration-crisis/p32874 <<) that are happening and what they mean conjuncturally.

In the past, figures considered heretical by the Catholic Church were publicly burned at the bonfire. Sadistic and macabre spectacle.
But nowadays?
O.M. makes use of a double irony to emphasize even more his disgust. This is the great power that the irony has. Keeping the striking metaphor, the 'sacrifices' by fire today are anything but spontaneous. We could make figuratively an analogy between the spontaneous combustion and the suicide, unlike the medieval inquisition 'shows'. Therefore, Melgaço points out how much there is not spontaneity or a self-immolation on the part of the protagonists (or puppets?) of hemorrhagic inhumane emigration. This underscores how much is actually a brutal and accumulative Condemnation, certainly.

Fire is one of the four classical elements in ancient Greek philosophy and science. It was commonly associated with the qualities of energy, assertiveness, and passion. In one Greek myth, Prometheus stole fire from the gods to protect the otherwise helpless humans, but was punished for this charity. Today many people still are punished but for another reason, lack of charity - by those who belong to the same human race (which is unique, there is only one race: the human). Lack of charity in its various levels - starting, therefore, with the humanitarian.

Pardon, I'll go a little deeper only along the next paragraph. But sharply this shows us even more the legitimacy of 'Eretto in Memoria'. It's no coincidence that Mr. Melgaço has inserted the concept of Memory in the title of his work; we have to learn from the past on behalf of a future not enslaved by it. My appointment is timely. Tomorrow the scene will be different - we all wish that. But reports, criticism, clear positions are essential for the sake of a conjunctural solution:

The last time something like this happened was in the post World War II. Admittedly, what the EU does has been a mere palliative. In the near future everyone will have to acknowledge this delicate situation and at least try to say 'are welcome' - even as an urgent humanitarian act. And, of course, part of the European population is conscious and articulate enough to press their governments so that the doors be opened fairly. What we see today (08 August 2015) is, macrocosmically, a cluster of nations trying to wash their hands and pass the burden to the 'next door neighbor'. It seems to me that from time to now, the German - Iron Lady - Merkel has taken a more assimilatory speech, to our relief. (One of the things she knows, like the rest of the world knows: European countries are aging and they need a renewed workforce - even as an antidote to the non-viability of their pension systems soon.) At least a drama like this rampant emigration, is now seen more broadly by some leaders who, albeit belatedly, begin to act like statesmen. While David William Donald Cameron - the UK prime minister still, blindly, insists on treating this issue as a police case. Regrettable! (Soon he will be forced to give way.) The president of France (François Hollande), with a rickety popularity, will maintain its conciliatory stance, certainly. A mere supporting actor coming from a country that has woefully a proven ultra-protectionist tradition (and a xenophobia sometimes more explicit sometimes more latent but we can not pretend it does not exist and in a worrying scale). To name just another of many examples, in fact it's vexing how the Hungary government (read: Viktor Orbáns, a mini-Putin) simply washes his hands before tormented, afflicted beings and treated like animals. Almost no one is innocent in terms of what I'm bringing to the fore. Across the ocean - dictators, profiteers, torturers, traffickers of desperate human beings (monstrous compatriots of those same human beings!) that perpetuate the Hades in so many countries (after all, their own countries or ethnic groups or...but today, many of these lands in full ruin process - often legacies of North American adventures there - to the point where no more can indeed be called 'countries') in shameful conditions (civil war, lack of state/rule of law, unemployment, famine etc). On the other hand, I'll not be pointing to some ordinary European citizens (starting with the Italians; more recently there's the increased flow for Greece and so on) ...European citizens who, according to themself - and have their reasons (exception to professedly xenophobic or belonging to minorities supremacists) -, they feel 'invaded' or are 'forced to accept' thousands of emigrants constantly - in this or that specific port or village or town -; is another apex of the crisis that deserves all the attention because it's an untenable situation for all truthfully victimized. I'm indeed referring to the notorious powerbrokers, the frigid bureaucrats, the demagogic egomaniac politicians (many of them also xenophobic >>Plus I could not fail to mention, even if in another context and continent, as it is embarrassing to the United States have as presidential candidate a buffoon like Donald Trump - his speech so reactionary/bigoted - and, worst, many moronics supporting this jobbernowl! It would be comical if it were not tragic... Apropos, the reaction of North America - to all that's happening - is disappointing because the superpowered nation did not realize that the colossal crisis is global, not just European. Signals to receive refugees were ridiculous at least until now. And we can not forget that the US, through its interventionist and invasive war psychosis in the government of George Walker Bush, turned out to be the most responsible for generating all this.<<), the overpowering leeches (linked to the financier supremacy) who put the aphrodisiac Money above all - whatever the cost, sheltered behind the shroud of incongruous globalization - and raise aseptic and hypocritical walls (concrete or figurative) in their rich frontiers despite all vampirism imperialist (immune to walls) practiced historically. [I write about a Brazilian artist, a native of Minas Gerais state that took all the gold looted by the Portuguese parasitic politic of the time, and indeed this same gold financed the British industrial revolution, if you do not know. But at what price? ..for surely gold washed in blood. If this was the relationship between metropolis and colony (ie, the same relationship between the guillotine and the neck) in that context, we can not rule out its harmful effects for centuries and how we should respond critically to such pitiable legacy. <> The same state - Minas Gerais - where it came from a simple worker - named Jean Charles de Menezes - and that, in London (there he was to pursue a better life, this is panoramically understandable to you?), the poor man was summarily slain by British police for 'being mistaken for a terrorist' - in 2005. <> I'm sorry if the content of this addendum seems to you scrappy but understand as a metaphor spatiotemporal. History can not be decoded and analyzed devoid of diachronic connections or machiavellianly 'appropriate' for those who write the 'official version', so ... the 'winners'. For good connoisseurs, enough mincing words.] Okay. Resuming the context of the argument above: historically, so far. And the rest of mankind that does little or even shuts up when it's 'convenient'.

Fortunately, there are those who do not allow themselves to be turned into pandemonium. O.M. did not gag himself and through his expressive craft, is heard.

'Eretto in Memoria' came into the world in tribute to all those who managed to make the multi connotative crossing and now await a better future. Without looking back. Or, conversely, believing that one day may return for a habitable homeland - finally.
'Eretto in Memoria', however, was created in memoriam of other beings. Those who failed to cross the ocean that separates many masks of death and at least a possible face of survival. Suffocated in vans ... yet suitcases, boxes ... or ... 'burned' in a blazing sea. Those who were 'scalded in a incendiary' main. Castaways of life but not of hope." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

{Post Scriptum

My notes above were posted on August 8, 2015. Today is the thirteenth day of January, 2017.

A lot like a South American caudillo, Donald J. Trump was elected president of his country. Cases of intolerance and hate crimes (thermometers that seem to me only an introduction) become more commonplace and explicit in USA. It´s not mere coincidence.

Many refugees in Europe are suffering and even dying of cold by the harsh winter and lack of organization of those who should offer them protection/shelter (sometimes in certain niches, I do not know if the terms would be these or the antitheses, honestly. Of course, I´m not referring to the goodwill of people officially assigned to this humanitarian function and of volunteers who competently fulfill their mission as much as possible, but rather of governmental dilemmas: it´s a conjunctural matter, they´re deficient public policies in which States are colliding each other). In fact, there´s an increasing tendency throughout the (with its existence in countdown?) European Union of (I´m obliged to repeat those horrible words) totalitarian, xenophobic, ultranationalist movements; it´s sufficient to observe dreadful ´alternatives´ that come to the fore in France, Austria, Holland, Greece, and so on (woefully, this also applies to the United States of North America and other pulverized parts of the globe).

[It was recently reported that in Brazil (a predominantly miscegenationed country), on the streets of a megalopolis such as São Paulo, neo-Nazi groups are posting posters on poles and walls with anti-Semitic dictates. To cite just one example that seems to be one more tip of an iceberg among several. Is, spraying itself on planet earth, the dream of a third Reich on the way again? ´Dream´ for some, but which always becomes a nightmare for most and even for the ´useful imbeciles´ who help to erect it by action or omission. Is turning into a franchise the third Reich? Our perception tells us that they´re no more isolated facts. Sometimes more implicitly, sometimes explicitly, the prejudiced, eugenic, sectarian wave expansion is not a mere point outside the curve. Without pyrotechnic alarmisms, at the very least we must pay close attention to the strong evidences of this nascent spirit of (suspect) time. (There are reports of people that lived the horror of World War II, the populist and authoritarian appeals that engender lobotomies and fanaticism - and genocides -, ... accounts that relate certain similarities between the past and what seems to be conjuncturally brewing now. Step by step, ´along the edges´. Despite the discrepancies amidst the scenarios of yesterday and today, I do not think it's just straw fire.)

From time to time, citizens (and voters) seem to grow weary of the ´wormy political classes´ and depart for the ´saviors of the nation´ (usually with reactionary, demagogic, boastful discourses); unpredictable opportunists, bare wires. Instead of finding modes to straighten out the political systems, the reverse is true: there´s an easy bet on (in effect: picaresque) martyrs, candidates for (in effect: unscrupulous) heroes, messianic and paternalistic bullies. Or, in the best style alerted by Machiavelli: they do not want or need to be loved, just feared. Currently, with the help of marketing and technology, they can be both. We´re interested in History so that the same mistakes are not made again. We know how Serpent's Eggs come about.]

Taking up the thread of the skein:

Which would be a ´refugee depot´ (sic) - following a strategic agreement with Germany (regretful to be the commonwealth that most embraced such human beings and having Merkel's popularity down, of course, the discourses change) - Turkey practically lives a dictatorship. This exhaust valve did not exactly work.

Some deplorable terrorist attacks on European territory (the same has constantly happened in the Turkish land, for these and other reasons) make everything even more troublesome and causing disturbing revolts in their citizens: quite rightly but we must be able to differentiate ´refugees´ from ´terrorists´ (what is not opportune for the retrograde forces that bring their claws to power). Anyway ...

Contrary to the chorus of a famous and affirmative pop song: will we survive? Hard to say. Nor I will comment on Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Syria, Venezuela etc. If I think about this wide world board that encompasses everything I said and much more, better not to extend the panorama (at any rate here and now, despite the thousands and thousands of typographic characters that I have already inserted in - originally about music - my review in this regard - as I am doing in that moment) because the complexities involved would almost make us knights of some apocalypse-on-duty.

´Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto´, a well-known dictum of Publius Terentius Afer. Unfortunately, the world now seems to be effusively in line with this maxim. But pointing to the more negative, dangerous and inhuman direction.

At least, and I give the feature of peroration to my following words, the present Melgacian creation (and everything it means) reveals itself more justifiable, commendable, courageous and, above all, necessary.}

"The Cantata Spirituale brings to the musical harvest a sacred text in the vernacular language.

The Italian solo cantata tended, when on a large scale, to become indistinguishable from a scene in an opera, in the same way the church cantata, solo or choral, is indistinguishable from a small oratorio or portion of an oratorio. This is equally evident whether we examine the unparalleled church cantatas of Bach, of which nearly 200 are extant, or the Chandos Anthems of Handel. In Johann Sebastian Bach's case many of the larger cantatas are actually called oratorios; and the Christmas Oratorio is a collection of six church cantatas actually intended for performance on six different days, though together forming as complete an artistic whole as any classical oratorio.

Throughout the Baroque, cantatas were in great demand for the services of the Lutheran church. Sacred cantatas for the liturgy or other occasions were not only composed by Bach but also by Dieterich Buxtehude, Christoph Graupner, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel and Georg Philipp Telemann, to name a few. Many secular cantatas were composed for events in the nobility. They were so similar in form to the sacred ones that many of them were parodied (in parts or completely) to sacred cantatas, for example in Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

One of Melgaço's innovations: 'Eretto in Memoria' is conventionally not an Oratorio, Cantata or Passion. Maybe it's a hybrid that combines elements of this triangle. But, noting the possible intersection points, the choice of the composer (by calling it Cantata) strikes me as the right one. The high beauty, the vastness numinous, in short, for me is an inspired creation able to make us kneel. Harvesting all that was interesting to him in secular (subject-matter) and religious (sonorous mosaic) and giving birth a common denominator. [And of course, he opts for a 'Diptych' just to emphasize this dualism. Dualism that at the same time seems insoluble (when we witness the reality that haunts us every day) and potentially undone (because in communion in an artistic expression - which aims interfere constructively in that same reality - in flux). Opts for 'Spirituale' because, at the end and in the work context, is what prevails.] So there's a point outside of the curve, ie the hieratic aura is maintained however hovering over inescapably humanized issues. Perhaps the most profane if we take into account the 'Homo homini lupus' - a Latin proverb meaning 'Man is wolf to man'.

Thomas Hobbes drew upon the proverb in his De Cive, writing in the dedication 'To speak impartially, both sayings are very true; That Man to Man is a kind of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities.' Hobbes was describing the tendency of people to act fairly and generously toward other people in the same society and the tendency of societies to act deceptively and violently toward other societies, or as he put it, 'In the one, there's some analogie of similitude with the Deity, to wit, Justice and Charity, the twin-sisters of peace: But in the other, Good men must defend themselves by taking to them for a Sanctuary the two daughters of War, Deceipt and Violence.' if we think since the legacies and remnants of historical imperialisms until the kaleidoscopic reasons for this tangle of dramas in the emigrants' countries of origin, in a way - with due recontextualization - it's still a very current perspective.

I hope you understand the symbolism - even applied to the theme of this 'spirituale' diptych. Perchance we can say that Melgaço is, like Wagner, a 'legato' master. Thus there's a profound redefinition of what is the silence that precedes and succeeds played and listened music. So the sound Piece overcomes death as much as possible (and beyond) because shows how much can 'overlap to silence/transcend the finitude' even after instrumentalized - since, transubstantiated, endures within us." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

Also check >> melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/eretto-in-memoria-cantata-spirituale-dittico-i-esodo-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-40-07 <<

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I - In 1940, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos created a secular cantata titled Mandu çarará, based on an Indian legend collected by Barbosa Rodrigues;

II - Spontaneous combustion, cause and ignition:
1. A substance with a relatively low ignition temperature (hay, straw, peat, etc.) begins to release heat. This may occur in several ways, usually oxidation by a little moisture and air, bacterial fermentation generates heat.
2. The heat is unable to escape (hay, straw, peat, etc. are good thermal insulators), and the temperature of the material rises.
3. The temperature of the material rises above its ignition point (even though much of the bacteria are destroyed by ignition temperatures).
4. Combustion begins if sufficient oxidizer, such as oxygen, and fuel are present to maintain the reaction into thermal run-away.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
Wikipedia was the main 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.