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Eureka {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 57​:​34]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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about

E u r e k a

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 57:34] 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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"´Eureka´ is an interjection used to celebrate a discovery or invention. It´s a transliteration of an exclamation attributed to Archimedes. Comes from the Ancient Greek word εὕρηκα heúrēka, meaning ´I have found (it)´, which is the first person singular perfect indicative active of the verb εὑρίσκω heuriskō ´I find´. It is closely related to heuristic, which refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery.

I will try to find the thread.
The Ariadne thread.

Each sound Piece here is dedicated to a female figure, real or imaginary, true or fictional. They all remind us of quite striking life stories - even archetypal, I would say. Maybe if we make an interweaving between the ´legacy´ of each, we could even find an overview of the feminine presence and uniqueness in History. [I suggest that you can perform such biographical archeology and then, carefully, seek the greatest common denominator.] You´ll testify that are deep and at the same time high Melgacian honors, as well as the universal (and humanistic) examples inserted in such dramatic contexts and that demanded an impressive resilience or denouement (through death or through life; by ultimate sacrifice or by reifying art, etc.). Of course, the elegiac atmosphere is due to the density involved; the fates of them (Kusama, Andrade, לִילִית, Ives, Salehi Agha-Soltan and Benário) do not hide the tragic silhouette intrinsic to the intricacies of mankind. But there´s a light at the end of these irrefutable and empathetic tunnels:

´Eureka!´

Insight is a psychological term that attempts to describe the process in problem solving when a previously unsolvable puzzle becomes suddenly clear and obvious. Often this transition from not understanding to spontaneous comprehension is accompanied by an exclamation of joy or satisfaction, an Aha! moment. A person utilizing insight to solve a problem is able to give accurate, discrete, all-or-nothing type responses, whereas individuals not using the insight process are more likely to produce partial, incomplete responses. Insight can be conceptualized as a two phase process. The first phase of an Aha! experience requires the problem solver to come upon an impasse, where they become stuck and even though they may seemingly have explored all the possibilities, are still unable to retrieve or generate a solution. The second phase occurs suddenly and unexpectedly. After a break in mental fixation or re-evaluating the problem, the answer is retrieved. Some research suggest that insight problems are difficult to solve because of our mental fixation on the inappropriate aspects of the problem content. In order to solve insight problems, one must ´think outside the box´. It is this elaborate rehearsal that may cause people to have better memory for Aha! moments. Insight is believed to occur with a break in mental fixation, allowing the solution to appear transparent and obvious.

Otacílio Melgaço imprimis proposes us to always ´think outside the box´. And so we lean over each of his honored feminal entities. The expression used by him to name this astonishing discographic album would be the demonstration that there was a sixfold lesson (a facet of a rose of winds/awakening referentiality/touchstone) to be learned (decoded/absorbed/inserted into our ethical-civilizing existential conduits/conducts), not by common sense ways. And that's the challenge that O.M. offers. In addition to inviting us to stupendous not passivity before a restless Work of Art, he makes one by one of the compositions: threads that bind us consciously to the six admirable Ariadnes.

Undoubtedly, like Jorge Luis Borges in view of The Garden of Forking Paths, Melgaço must have proclaimed after reached the Epicentre (and the Becoming) of ´Eureka´: I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"´To the few who love me and whom I love – to those who feel rather than to those who think – to the dreamers and those who put faith in dreams as in the only realities – I offer this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truth; constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone: let us say as a Romance; or, if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem.´ — Preface to ´Eureka´, by Edgar Allan Poe

The Melgacian ´Eureka´ is a stunning hexahedron. And with universal principles.

Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromata, v, 105). Similar: Plutarchus (De animae procreatione, 5 p, 1014 A) concerning Heraclitus:

´This universal order, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire.´

If the universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle, we´re now face to face with ever-living fire in the form of music. Form apt to be warmly felt (even when eventually it´s formally phlegmatic) as insightly transcended. But in an underlyingly uncommon way - as habitual if we think of Otacílio.

´The only mode, therefore, in which, under such a state of affairs, we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all.´ (E.A.P.)

Albert Einstein in a letter written in 1934, noted that Poeian ´Eureka´ was ´eine schöne Leistung eines ungewöhnlich selbständigen Geistes´ (a beautiful achievement of an unusually independent mind). About the sonic concoction here focused, I repeat every word uttered by the German-born theoretical physicist. The audible ´Eureka´ is a beautiful achievement of an unusually independent mind.

Bear in mind." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - The exclamation 'Eureka!' is famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka!" when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose—he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. (This relation is not what is known as Archimedes' principle—that deals with the upthrust experienced by a body immersed in a fluid.) He then realized that the volume of irregular objects could be measured with precision, a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked.

Archimedes' insight led to the solution of a problem posed by Hiero of Syracuse, on how to assess the purity of an irregular golden votive crown; he had given his goldsmith the pure gold to be used, and correctly suspected he had been cheated, by the goldsmith removing gold and adding the same weight of silver. Equipment for weighing objects already existed, and now that Archimedes could also measure volume, their ratio would give the object's density, an important indicator of purity.

This story first appeared in written form in Vitruvius's books of architecture, two centuries after it supposedly took place. Some scholars have doubted the accuracy of this tale, saying among other things that the method would have required precise measurements that would have been difficult to make at the time. Galileo Galilei himself weighed in on the controversy, suggesting a design for a hydrostatic balance that could be used to compare the dry weight of an object with the weight of the same object submerged in water. For the problem posed to Archimedes, though, there is a simple method which requires no precision equipment: balance the crown against pure gold in air, and then submerge the scale with crown and gold in water to see if they still balance;

II - Eureka (1848) is a lengthy non-fiction work by American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) which he subtitled "A Prose Poem", though it has also been subtitled as "An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe". Adapted from a lecture he had presented, Eureka describes Poe's intuitive conception of the nature of the universe with no antecedent scientific work done to reach his conclusions. He also discusses man's relationship with God, whom he compares to an author. It is dedicated to the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Though it is generally considered a literary work, some of Poe's ideas anticipate 20th century scientific discoveries and theories. Indeed a critical analysis of the scientific content of Eureka reveals a non-causal correspondence with modern cosmology due to the assumption of an evolving Universe, but excludes the anachronistic anticipation of relativistic concepts such as black holes.

...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.

credits

released October 1, 2015

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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O t a c í l i o
M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | engineering & sound design | art design | production | direction}

Special Guests: Nausícaaa Ensemble | Zycluz Quartett

Estúdio Yoknapotawpha/BR + Unidade Euromobile

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
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Minas Gerais,
Brazil.
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