E S T E T I C A
D E L
S - I - L - E - N - Z - I - O
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 01:33:16] all rights reserved
#
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)
+
"This is one of the rare sound works by Otacílio Melgaço from which he collaterally talks on dating.* We know this is not his usual behavior as the artist prefers its creations wandering through
´Atemporal´ and ´Intemporal´
(terms from the - Brazilian - Melgaço's native language).
What is ´Atemporal´? What transfixes Time without necessarily belonging to the past, future or present.
We go further, what is ´Intemporal´? What is not linked to Time at all.
The Otacílio's Offspring transit amid one prism and another. And others...
>>Here it is worth noting: Does Time exist as a physical entity? Or is it just a human concept? The fellow countryman writer, playwright and poet Lúcio Cardoso, for whom Melgaço has expressive admiration (and to whom he has already dedicated a Symphony -
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/luci-mph-o-ny-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-41-38 -), once conjectured: ´[Time]. A high and total materialism where there is no fight against evidence. A great world without freedom, a great chain(ing) that ended at the beginning, an eternal return already accomplished. Time is an illusion: it assumes movement and freedom that do not exist in the great material world.´ Imagine, then, if we approached the ´immaterial´ (often Otacílio's raw material)? Perhaps for him, the Time, which peradventure does not really exist, is part of what O.M. would call S-i-l-e-n-c-e?<<
´S-i-l-e-n-z-i-o´. I presume that the adoption of the curious hyphens by Melgaço is a delineative metaphor not only of ´read between ... the lines´ but more than that: ... the interletters as if to highlight the permeability (of the meaning) of the vocable in question. Otacílio, in a private report on ´Estetica Del...´ (title originally in Italian), confessed to me that the Oeuvre, with Organ and Percussion as the backbone, already had its three Movements composed, recorded and finalized some years ago. Only (a rare interpenetration of ´Overture´ - from the English language - and ´Apertura´ - the same signification but again in Italian) the ´Overtura´, word that names the sonic introductory intervention - in that case, based on electronic mediations - was brought to the world owing to the present release.
There are many referential ramifications, one of the characteristics of a fulfilling work such as the Melgacian:
´Estetica Del S-i-l-e-n-z-i-o´ encompasses Susan Sontag and ´Styles of Radical Will´ (published in 1969). Her book opens with an essay, ´The Aesthetics of Silence´ (written in 1967).
Below are some excerpts:
<<Mallarmé thought that it was the task of poetry, using words, to clean up our reality cluttered with words - by creating silences around things.
(...) It is necessary to recognize a surrounding environment of sound and language in order to admit silence. This not only exists in a world full of speech and other sounds, but also has in its identity a space of time that is pierced by sound.
The notions of silence, emptiness and reduction outline new recipes for the acts of looking, listening, etc. - which either promote a more immediate and sensitive experience of art, or face the work of art in a more conscious way...
Silence is a prophecy and the artists' actions can be understood as an attempt to simultaneously fulfill and reverse it. Just as language points to its own transcendence in silence, this points to its own transcendence into a discourse beyond silence.
An exemplary decision of this kind can only be made after the artist has demonstrated that he possesses genius and has exercised it with authority. Once he surpasses his peers by the standards he recognizes, there is only one path to his pride. For to be ´a victim of the craving for silence´ is to be, in still a further sense, superior to everyone else. It suggests that the artist had the wit to raise more questions than other people, and that he has stronger nerves and higher standards of consciousness.
The truly serious attitude is that which regards art as a 'means' to something which perhaps can only be attained by abandoning art. (...) Although it is no longer a confession, art is more than ever a liberation, an exercise in asceticism. Through it the artist becomes purified – of himself and, ultimately, of his art. (…) Whereas formerly the artist's good was the mastery and full performance of his art, now his highest good is to reach the point where such goals of excellence become meaningless to him, emotionally and ethically, he is most satisfied. for being silent than for finding a voice in art. (…) Silence is the last extraterrestrial gesture of the artist: through silence he frees himself from servile captivity before the world, which appears as boss, client, consumer, opponent, arbiter and distorter of his work.
A prerequisite of 'emptying' is being able to perceive what one is 'full of'...
(…) The effective work of art leaves silence in its wake.
Silence keeps things 'open'.>>
In short, Susan's dissertation is one of Melgaço's many wind roses [it is enough to bring to the fore ´Silence: Lectures and Writings´ by John Cage] and Otacílio does not aim at a type of conceptual transcription as a totalizing echo of evidence from this source. Despite that, if there is (and there is) such thread of Ariadne betwixt both precious instigating - audible readable - manifestations, I believe that all the clues to this are presumable through the selected and guided sequence of extracts that I made emerge above. I do not, therefore, see the need for an exegesis because these Sontagian spells speak for themselves. Nevertheless, remaining attentive to the fact that a slice of what is our cynosure hither is ´a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of´, a feasible inference which is valid if we consider the breadth and scope of O.M.´s Opus is that, ´... if silence were compared to a river and its flow, Melgaço presents us with a third bank´.
Resuming our vibrant leitmotiv:
There is the First Movement of ´Estetica Del S-i-l-e-n-z-i-o´,
dedicated to 坂本 龍 (Ryuichi Sakamoto);
the Second Movement to Scott Walker;
the Third Movement to Ennio Morricone.
And here * [as the artist almost places the sibylline Piece chronologically, which is not his custom] the relationship with ´an offbeat passage of time-in-concreteness´ is justified for the reason that Otacílio testified to me that he had the clear impression that there should be such Dedications but, in principle, he did not know to whom. As an inner subpoena that was still related to a future memory. It is only now, at this point in the year 2023, that this Triptych riddle has been solved. With the recent passing of Mr. Sakamoto, was complete the triad of concise ´Requiems´ (if so I should call since, among infinite ones embraced by Melgaço, another correlation with the theme of ´silence´ is death and/or transcendence). A remarkable sacred character - à la O.M. - inhabiting the Organ seems to corroborate this. The percussive liturgy, ditto. [I cannot fail to mention a series of unusual punctual appearances such as from ethereal guitars to the flight of moths, from Zen bells to the breath of zephyrs and so on.] Certainly the triumvirate formed by the Japanese, American-British & Italian musicians represents a train of thought that, in Melgaço's mind, is like a jigsaw puzzle that finally arrives at a depiction that is eternalized ritually, as well as, above all, a sonic organism in very attractive ´mosaic´ to the awe-inspiring ´sound Temples´ of the composer and multi-instrumentalist from Minas Gerais. As if that weren't enough, Ladies and Gentlemen, there's more. In each of the parts, we will come across the mesmerizing atmospheric poetical vocal element since, respectively and in a conjunctural symmetry that I understand as ´pyramidal´, the glossological cosmos of Matsuo Bashō / William Blake / Giacomo Leopardi.
These polysemic layers are, without a doubt, also portion of a complex multidirectional and polyfocal conception of Gesamtkunstwerk that so elevates the figure of Otacílio Melgaço to an unique and, probably for that very reason, always surprising pantheon among contemporary germinators.
´After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music´, uttered Aldous Huxley. Otacílio Melgaço goes further and mysteriously attests to us: countless times (timelessly) it is plausible, like a palindrome, to invert this correlation. Or amalgamate it. So musically silent. So silently musical." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
"...est ETICA Del S-i-l-e-n-z-i-o.!." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
&
I - Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), Styles of Radical Will (1969), On Photography (1977), and Illness as Metaphor (1978), as well as the fictional works The Way We Live Now (1986), The Volcano Lover (1992), and In America (1999).
Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and leftist ideology. Her essays and speeches drew controversy, and she has been described as "one of the most influential critics of her generation";
II - Ryuichi Sakamoto (January 17, 1952 – March 28, 2023) was a Japanese composer, record producer, and actor who pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
Sakamoto began his career while at university in the 1970s as a session musician, producer, and arranger. His first major success came in 1978 as co-founder of YMO. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978. Two years later, he released the album B-2 Unit. It included the track "Riot in Lagos", which was significant in the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, and collaborate with many international artists, David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz among them. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" (1999) was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.
As a film score composer, Sakamoto won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy, and two Golden Globe Awards. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) marked his debut as both an actor and a film-score composer; its main theme was adapted into the single "Forbidden Colours" which became an international hit. His most successful work as a film composer was The Last Emperor (1987), after which he continued earning accolades composing for films such as The Sheltering Sky (1990), Little Buddha (1993), and The Revenant (2015). On occasion, Sakamoto also worked as a composer and a scenario writer on anime and video games. He was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture of France in 2009 for his contributions to music;
III - Noel Scott Engel (January 9, 1943 – March 22, 2019), better known by his stage name Scott Walker, was an American-British singer-songwriter and record producer who resided in England. Walker was known for his emotive voice and his unorthodox stylistic path which took him from being a teen pop icon in the 1960s to an avant-garde musician in the 21st century. Walker's success was largely in the United Kingdom, where his first four solo albums reached the top ten. He lived in the UK from 1965 onward and became a UK citizen in 1970.
Rising to fame in the mid-1960s as frontman of the pop music trio the Walker Brothers, he began a solo career with 1967's Scott, moving toward an increasingly challenging style on late-1960s baroque pop albums such as Scott 3 and Scott 4 (both 1969). After sales of his solo work started to decrease, he reunited with the Walker Brothers in the mid-1970s. From the mid-1980s onward, Walker revived his solo career while moving in an increasingly avant-garde direction; of this period in his career, The Guardian said "imagine Andy Williams reinventing himself as Stockhausen". Walker's 1960s recordings were highly regarded by the 1980s UK underground music scene, and gained a cult following.
Walker continued to record until 2018. He was described by the BBC upon his death as "one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in rock history";
IV - Ennio Morricone OMRI (10 November 1928 – 6 July 2020) was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and trumpeter who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as more than 100 classical works, Morricone is widely considered one of the most prolific and greatest film composers of all time. His filmography includes more than 70 award-winning films, all Sergio Leone's films since A Fistful of Dollars, all Giuseppe Tornatore's films since Cinema Paradiso, The Battle of Algiers, Dario Argento's Animal Trilogy, 1900, Exorcist II, Days of Heaven, several major films in French cinema, in particular the comedy trilogy La Cage aux Folles I, II, III and Le Professionnel, as well as The Thing, Once Upon a Time in America, The Mission, The Untouchables, Mission to Mars, Bugsy, Disclosure, In the Line of Fire, Bulworth, Ripley's Game, and The Hateful Eight. His score to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) is regarded as one of the most recognizable and influential soundtracks in history. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
After playing the trumpet in jazz bands in the 1940s, he became a studio arranger for RCA Victor and in 1955 started ghost writing for film and theatre. Throughout his career, he composed music for artists such as Paul Anka, Mina, Milva, Zucchero, and Andrea Bocelli. From 1960 to 1975, Morricone gained international fame for composing music for Westerns and—with an estimated 10 million copies sold—Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the best-selling scores worldwide. From 1966 to 1980, he was a main member of Il Gruppo, one of the first experimental composers collectives, and in 1969 he co-founded Forum Music Village, a prestigious recording studio. From the 1970s, Morricone excelled in Hollywood, composing for prolific American directors such as Don Siegel, Mike Nichols, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone, Warren Beatty, John Carpenter, and Quentin Tarantino. In 1977, he composed the official theme for the 1978 FIFA World Cup. He continued to compose music for European productions, such as Marco Polo, La piovra, Nostromo, Fateless, Karol, and En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait. Morricone's music has been reused in television series, including The Simpsons and The Sopranos, and in many films, including Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. He also scored seven Westerns for Sergio Corbucci, Duccio Tessari's Ringo duology and Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown and Face to Face. Morricone worked extensively for other film genres with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Mauro Bolognini, Giuliano Montaldo, Roland Joffé, Roman Polanski, Henri Verneuil, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. His acclaimed soundtrack for The Mission (1986), was certified gold in the United States. The album Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone stayed for 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums.
Morricone's best-known compositions include "The Ecstasy of Gold", "Se telefonando", "Man with a Harmonica", "Here's to You", the UK No. 2 single "Chi Mai", "Gabriel's Oboe", and "E Più Ti Penso". In 1971, he received a "Targa d'Oro" for worldwide sales of 22 million, and by 2016 Morricone had sold more than 70 million records worldwide. In 2007, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music". He was nominated for a further six Oscars, and in 2016, received his only competitive Academy Award for his score to Quentin Tarantino's film The Hateful Eight, at the time becoming the oldest person ever to win a competitive Oscar. His other achievements include three Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes, six BAFTAs, ten David di Donatello, eleven Nastro d'Argento, two European Film Awards, the Golden Lion Honorary Award, and the Polar Music Prize in 2010. Morricone influenced many artists from film scoring to other styles and genres, including Hans Zimmer, Danger Mouse, Dire Straits, Muse, Metallica, Fields of the Nephilim, and Radiohead;
V - Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644 – November 28, 1694; born Matsuo Kinsaku [松尾 金作], then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa [松尾 忠右衛門 宗房]) was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called hokku). He is also well known for his travel essays beginning with Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton (1684), written after his journey west to Kyoto and Nara. Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned, and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, "Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses."
Bashō was introduced to poetry at a young age, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo (modern Tokyo) he quickly became well known throughout Japan. He made a living as a teacher; but then renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements;
VI - William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".
Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he came to be highly regarded by later critics and readers for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". In fact, he has been said to be "a key early proponent of both Romanticism and Nationalism". A committed Christian who was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions. Though later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors";
VII - Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of the most important figures in the literature of the world, as well as one of the principals of literary romanticism; his constant reflection on existence and on the human condition—of sensuous and materialist inspiration—has also earned him a reputation as a deep philosopher. He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century but routinely compared by Italian critics to his older contemporary Alessandro Manzoni despite expressing "diametrically opposite positions." Although he lived in a secluded town in the conservative Papal States, he came into contact with the main ideas of the Enlightenment, and, through his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to the Romantic era. The strongly lyrical quality of his poetry made him a central figure on the European and international literary and cultural landscape;
VIII -
filosoficabiblioteca.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/susan-sontag-estetica-do-silencio-in-a-vontade-radical.pdf (In Portuguese)
...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...
\|/
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.
