H e m m e t A v I s a k J a c o b i

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:08:45] 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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"´Film as dream, film as music.´ (I.B.)

The title originally in Swedish. Means ´The Home of Isak Jacobi´. Each track emphasizes striking moments of a very special excerpt filmic. Otacílio Melgaço was always a faithful admirer of Ingmar Bergman. There´s a perplexed passage in ´Fanny and Alexander´ that shows both children hosted at the eerie home of Isak Jacobi, character played by admirable Erland Josephson. Specifically are scenes that at all times captivated Melgaço (are quite coherent with his personality, I have no doubt) and now receive a peculiar musical perspective of Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist. Simply brilliant!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"I'm sure that this work would be a perfect soundtrack for puppet theater!

The sound Pieces seem gems of chamber music. ´Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments - traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part.´

In the present Magical Mystery Work, there are - most often - two or three instruments apiece, indecipherable combination of audio colors.

Interpenetrating punctually, obscure offspring with strategic interventions.

Not always resonate simultaneously, rather peculiar synchronicities.

Order, timbre, articulation, rhythm, dynamics, pitch, ..., all compositional parameters receive care from a true goldsmith.

Each splendid acting is renewed - or reinvented - by the sonority of a very magnetic rereading.

Every detail has a singular importance, nothing escapes the Melgacian mastery. There´s an intriguing point of view: O.M. is a puppet master and each of the seven creations a marionette. Ludic dolls that, ´being heard´, not allow us to divert attention for a second. Because the entire disc is also a theater of shadows; ´un teatro di chiaroscuro´. And along the wide gradation between light and dark, we recognize ourselves. It reminds me when Ismael asks Alexander to sign his own name (Alexander Ekdahl) on a piece of paper and writes the boy: ´Ismael Retzinsky´.

Usually the genius born in Uppsala used pre-existing musical creations. Bach is an example. I think amazing to have the chance to revisit an essential snippet of his filmography enjoying the privilege of hearing Pieces created especially for this.

Two sentences of another great ´regista´ - among other things -, the American David Lynch, reverberate properly:
1 - ´Every time I hear sounds, I see pictures. Then, I start getting ideas.´
2 - ´Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual.´
Aware of it, Otacílio Melgaço sagaciously proposes a reversal: he creates a soundtrack and then we insert mentally the scenes of the Swedish director.
Or something more: we insert new images, ´our´ images. As happened when there was drama through radio broadcasts: the features/characteristics of each character and all other visual derivations was created by the imagination of the listener.

One way or another, taking as its starting point - the puzzling fragment of the Bergmanian film, the audible idiosyncrasies add a new dimension to this masterful eclipse proposed by Otacílio. All the enchantment/bewitchment revealed by Ingmar - in performances chosen by Melgaço - wins a sonic version indefectibly of the same level that leaves us speechless. An indescribable feat made by O.M.
Another." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

see also
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/deslimite-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-02-00-00

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I - Fanny and Alexander (Swedish: Fanny och Alexander) is a 1982 Swedish drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The plot focuses on two siblings and their large family in Uppsala, Sweden in the 1900s. It was originally conceived as a four-part TV movie and cut in that version, spanning 312 minutes; a 188-minute cut version was created later for cinematic release, although this version was in fact the one to be released first. The TV version has since been released as a one-part film, and both versions have been shown in theaters throughout the world. The 312-minute cut of the film ranks it among one of the longest cinematic films in history;

II - The story is set during 1907–09 (with an epilogue in 1910), in the Swedish town of Uppsala where Alexander (Bertil Guve), his sister Fanny (Pernilla Allwin) and their well-to-do family, the Ekdahls, live. The siblings' parents are both involved in theater and are happily married until their father, Oscar (Allan Edwall), suddenly dies from a stroke. Shortly thereafter, their mother, Emilie (Ewa Fröling), marries Edvard Vergérus (Jan Malmsjö), the local bishop and a widower, and moves into his ascetic home where he lives with his mother, sister, aunt and maids.

Emilie initially expects that she will be able to carry over the lavish, joyful qualities of her previous home into the marriage, but realizes that Edvard's harsh authoritarian policies are unshakable. The relationship between the bishop and Alexander is especially cold, as Alexander invents stories, for which Edvard punishes him severely. Edvard immediately confines the children to their bedroom. As a result, Emilie asks for a divorce, which Edvard will not consent to; though she may desert the marriage, doing so would place the children in his custody, including the infant from her recent pregnancy. Meanwhile, the rest of the Ekdahl family has begun to worry about their condition. When Emilie secretly visits her former mother-in-law, Helena (Gunn Wållgren), to explain what happened, their friend

ISAK JACOBI (Erland Josephson), helps smuggle the children from the house. They live temporarily with Isak and his nephews -

ARON Retzinsky (Mats Bergman) - the puppet master -

and

ISMAEL Retzinsky (Stina Ekblad), - in their store.

Emilie, now in the later stages of her pregnancy, refuses to restore the children to the home. Edvard insists she do so. Emilie gives Edvard a large dosage of her sleeping pills. She explains to him, as he shows signs that the medication is working, that she intends to flee the home as he sleeps. He claims that he will follow her family from city to city and ruin their lives, then blacks out. After Emilie gets away, Edvard's dying aunt knocks over a gas lamp, which sets her bedroom and nightgown on fire. She runs through the house in flames to Edvard's room and falls on him. Despite the sedative, he is able to get her off him, but dies shortly thereafter.

Alexander had fantasized about his stepfather's death while living with Isak. Isak's mysterious nephew, Ismael, explains that fantasy can become true as he dreams it.

The story ends on a happy, life-affirming note, with the christening celebration of Emilie's and the late bishop's daughter as well as the extra-marital daughter of Alexander's uncle and the family maid, Gustav Adolf Ekdahl (Jarl Kulle) and Maj (Pernilla August). During the festivities, however, Alexander encounters the ghost of the bishop who knocks him to the floor, and tells him that he will never be free;

III - Upon its release, the film was widely acclaimed, and regarded as a late masterpiece by Bergman. The film won four Academy awards in 1984 and was nominated in six categories including Best Director (Ingmar Bergman) and Best foreign language film (won);

IV - Watch one of the scenes chosen by O.M.
His - gran finale - ´Ismael´: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7heIx8FV5U

...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.