G o l d e n R a t i o

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:16:31] 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)

+

"Welcome to the splendiferous Melgacian Sectio Divina!"
(Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"De Divina Proportione; a musical work full of gee-whiz proportionalities, seductive apexes, absorbing mathematical abstractions, ... , Vitruvian sonorities.

>>

References and Curiosities - Track by Track:

01 - In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. The Greek letter phi represents the golden ratio. Its value is 1.6180339887... I suppose 1 is the album itself (one disc: the uterus, the continent); 6 is the number of tracks (the content) and the title of the first - complements phi fractionation.

The approach that the composer gives us from the strings is still sovereign, ravishingly tearing, indescribable!;

02 - Athena, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, strategic war, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Minerva is the Roman goddess identified with Athena. Athena is portrayed as a shrewd companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the virgin patroness of Athens. The Athenians founded the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her namesake city, Athens (Athena Parthenos), in her honour.

More recently, is an acronym (Advanced Test High Energy Asset). Perhaps Melgaço compares the Zawinul notes with sound lasers!

Josef Erich ´Joe´ Zawinul (1932 – 2007) was an Austrian jazz keyboardist and composer. First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with elements of rock and world music. Later, Zawinul co-founded the groups Weather Report and the world fusion music-oriented Zawinul Syndicate. Additionally, he made pioneering use of electric piano and synthesizers.

In my opinion, endures for all the track, a similar ´cosmic´ atmosphere to the Weathereportian music ´Mysterious Traveller´ in its most outer, sidereal feature;

03 - Leonardo Bonacci (1170 – 1250) - known as Fibonacci - was an Italian mathematician, considered to be ´the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages.´ Fibonacci introduced to Europe the Hindu–Arabic numeral system primarily through his composition in 1202 of Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation). He also introduced to Europe the sequence of Fibonacci numbers (discovered earlier in India but not previously known in Europe), which he used as an example in Liber Abaci. Fibonacci mentioned the numerical series now named after him in his Liber Abaci; the ratio of sequential elements of the Fibonacci sequence approaches the golden ratio asymptotically.
In the plastically perfect Melgacian album cover is the Fibonacci spiral: an approximation of the golden spiral created by drawing circular arcs connecting the opposite corners of squares in the Fibonacci tiling; this one uses squares of sizes 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and 34.

Through concrete records, there are references to the railway universe - in the past, so typical of the natural Brazilian State of Otacílio (Minas Gerais).

Undoubtedly a resonant surrounding odyssey; another mesmerizing sonic colossus, and here an auspicious metaphor: to all that does not fit in a restricted ´one hundred and forty characters world´;

04 - De Divina Proportione, a three-volume work by Luca Pacioli, was published in 1509. Pacioli, a Franciscan friar, was known mostly as a mathematician, but he was also trained and keenly interested in art. De Divina Proportione explored the mathematics of the golden ratio. Though it is often said that Pacioli advocated the golden ratio's application to yield pleasing, harmonious proportions, Livio points out that the interpretation has been traced to an error in 1799, and that Pacioli actually advocated the Vitruvian system of rational proportions. Pacioli also saw Catholic religious significance in the ratio, which led to his work's title. De Divina Proportione contains illustrations of regular solids by Leonardo da Vinci, Pacioli's longtime friend and collaborator.
Leonardo da Vinci's illustrations of polyhedra in De divina proportione (On the Divine Proportion) and his views that some bodily proportions exhibit the golden ratio have led some scholars to speculate that he incorporated the golden ratio in his paintings. But the suggestion that his Mona Lisa, for example, employs golden ratio proportions, is not supported by anything in Leonardo's own writings. Similarly, although the Vitruvian Man is often shown in connection with the golden ratio, the proportions of the figure do not actually match it, and the text only mentions whole number ratios.

Bel canto: can we hear (libidinous?) howling wolves throughout this Piece?

(In recognition of the creative and meticulous and intriguing mind of Melgaço, a howl also appears but only once on the second track)

I draw attention to the harmonic complexity and intricate pianistic rhythmicity;

05 - Using a bit of virtual tentacles:

05.1 > www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbEarwdusc

05.2 > www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMCVShxxVE8

Based on this Bachian version of Otacílio Melgaço (´Prelude and Fugue No.1 in C major´ that he enigmatically reverses), I never heard anything so touching! How should I say?, I never heard anything in so perceptible and delicate ´superhuman´ rise;

06 - A Chaconne is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line (ground bass) which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and melodic invention. In this it closely resembles the passacaglia. The ground bass, if there is one, may typically descend stepwise from the tonic to the dominant pitch of the scale; the harmonies given to the upper parts may emphasize the circle of fifths or a derivative pattern thereof.

The Shinkansen (new trunk line) is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. Again we´re faced with the perspective used in the third track but from another viewpoint. Interesting to think about this analogy of time and space.

Subtly, it seems to me that O.M., multicultural and elegiac, suggests the bass-line (which is a chaconne!) of ´Dazed and Confused´ - seminal song of the English hard rock band Led Zeppelin.

´新幹線 シャコンヌ´ seems a composition that performs a fascinating eclipse between East and West. The coda sounds remarkably ritualistic. The golden final cut.

<<

The golden ratio was known to the ancient Greeks, who ascribed to it mystical and religious meaning and called it the divine proportion.
The golden ratio has captured the popular imagination and under the scrutiny of scholars it can be misunderstood. One more dichotomy typical of human idiosyncrasies.

None of that matters here. The work of Melgaço is above these Manichean angles.

In ´The Divine Proportion: A Study in Mathematical Beauty´ by H.E. Huntley, we can read that the description of this proportion as Golden or Divine is fitting perhaps because it is seen by many to open the door to a deeper understanding of beauty and spirituality in life. That’s an incredible role for one number to play, but then again this one number has played an incredible role in human history and the universe at large. Stripped of gnostic naïvity, open to (widely revealed and achieved through Art!) the potentialities of Humanism (including the longing for transcendence) - I believe these beautifully mathematical words above are earning effects after listening the phenomenal Melgacian Golden Ratio." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

&

I - The golden ratio also is called the golden mean or golden section (Latin: sectio aurea). Other names include extreme and mean ratio, medial section, divine proportion, divine section (Latin: sectio divina), golden proportion, golden cut, and golden number.

Some twentieth-century artists and architects, including Le Corbusier and Dalí, have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio—especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratio—believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing.

Mathematicians since Euclid have studied the properties of the golden ratio, including its appearance in the dimensions of a regular pentagon and in a golden rectangle, which may be cut into a square and a smaller rectangle with the same aspect ratio. The golden ratio has also been used to analyze the proportions of natural objects as well as man-made systems such as financial markets, in some cases based on dubious fits to data;

II - The golden ratio has fascinated Western intellectuals of diverse interests for at least 2,400 years. According to Mario Livio:

"Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics."

Ancient Greek mathematicians first studied what we now call the golden ratio because of its frequent appearance in geometry. The division of a line into "extreme and mean ratio" (the golden section) is important in the geometry of regular pentagrams and pentagons. Euclid's Elements (Greek: Στοιχεῖα) provides the first known written definition of what is now called the golden ratio: "A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the lesser." Euclid explains a construction for cutting (sectioning) a line "in extreme and mean ratio", i.e., the golden ratio. Throughout the Elements, several propositions (theorems in modern terminology) and their proofs employ the golden ratio.

The golden ratio is explored in Luca Pacioli's book De divina proportione of 1509.

The first known approximation of the (inverse) golden ratio by a decimal fraction, stated as "about 0.6180340", was written in 1597 by Michael Maestlin of the University of Tübingen in a letter to his former student Johannes Kepler.

Since the 20th century, the golden ratio has been represented by the Greek letter φ (phi, after Phidias, a sculptor who is said to have employed it) or less commonly by τ (tau, the first letter of the ancient Greek root τομή—meaning cut);

III - Ernő Lendvaï analyzes Béla Bartók's works as being based on two opposing systems, that of the golden ratio and the acoustic scale, though other music scholars reject that analysis. French composer Erik Satie used the golden ratio in several of his pieces, including Sonneries de la Rose+Croix. The golden ratio is also apparent in the organization of the sections in the music of Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections in Water), from Images (1st series, 1905), in which "the sequence of keys is marked out by the intervals 34, 21, 13 and 8, and the main climax sits at the phi position."

The musicologist Roy Howat has observed that the formal boundaries of La Mer correspond exactly to the golden section. Trezise finds the intrinsic evidence "remarkable," but cautions that no written or reported evidence suggests that Debussy consciously sought such proportions.

Pearl Drums positions the air vents on its Masters Premium models based on the golden ratio. The company claims that this arrangement improves bass response and has applied for a patent on this innovation.

Though Heinz Bohlen proposed the non-octave-repeating 833 cents scale based on combination tones, the tuning features relations based on the golden ratio. As a musical interval the ratio 1.618... is 833.090... cents;

IV - Taking into account the thematic, also check:
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/spiral-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-30-13

...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.