J E R U S A L I E N
(U R I Z E N:
O r i g i n a l
G r a p h i c
N o v e l
S o u n d t r a c k)
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 36:36] 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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"URIZEN. In Otacílio Melgaço's conception, the name of a place. Where would it be located? It is not revealed. When? Yes, there is a date, May 28, 1918. And here begins the Odyssey of an intriguing character, OTTO KAVENDISH. Melgaço had been dedicating himself to writing a Graphic Novel for a long time. Since late adolescence. For a few years he left it hibernating. Meanwhile, in addition to his sonic works, Otacílio also created plays, photo exhibition, a short film, et cetera et cetera. It was an extensive wait until he definitively brings URIZEN to light, in a publication that takes on the role of Preamble to the Saga.
Urizen. Is the word inspired by the English poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake? ´Unsophismablely´, confirms the Brazilian multi-artist. But does it allude to Blake's creations in which this term appears? No, absolutely.
In the mythology of the impressive figure born 1757 in Soho, London, Urizen is the embodiment of conventional reason and law. He is usually depicted as a bearded old man; he sometimes bears architect's tools, to create and constrain the universe; or nets, with which he ensnares people in webs of law and conventional society. Originally, Urizen represented one half of a two-part system, with him representing reason and Los, his opposition, representing imagination. In Blake's reworking of his mythic system, Urizen is one of the four Zoas that result from the division of the primordial man, Albion, and he continues to represent reason. He has an Emanation, or paired female equivalent, Ahania, who stands for Pleasure. In Blake's myth, Urizen is joined by many daughters with three representing aspects of the body. He is also joined by many sons, with four representing the four elements. These sons join in rebellion against their father but are later united in the Last Judgment. In many of Blake's books, Urizen is seen with four books that represent the various laws that he places upon humanity.
But what about the word itself? In the article The Reasons for ´Urizen´ by Sheila A. Spector, an independent scholar who has devoted her career to exploring the intersection between Romanticism and Judaica, it is clear how much of a question this is not so pellucid.
Since 1929, most critics have agreed that the name Urizen has Greek origins: <<The name ´Urizen´ is, I believe, intended to indicate this. Taking it (as we are entitled to in the absence of proof that Blake intended otherwise) as derived from the Greek word . . . meaning ´to bound´ or ´limit,´ with the cognate form ´Uranus,´ signifying the Lord of the Firmament, or that first self-imposed setter of bounds whose rule became a tyranny that his own sons were impelled to break and supplant, we have a symbolic name conveying exactly that state described in the opening lines of the Preludium.>>
While ´it is not certain that Blake knew Greek as early as 1793, when he first used Urizen’s name,´ few question the likelihood that Urizen derives in some way from the Greek. Less recognized, however, is the possibility that Blake’s coinage has Hebrew antecedents as well, since the earliest direct evidence we have that Blake knew any Hebrew at all comes from two indecipherable messages on illustrations for Young’s Night Thoughts, begun in 1795.
Urizen can be interpreted as a compound of ´Ur´ and ´rizen.´ According to traditional Hebrew, or is a common word meaning light, along with all of its metaphoric associations.
Rizen. Reason. Razon.
The word razon is a verb meaning:
<<To poise or balance a thing by the hand, in order to feel whether it be heavy or not. . . . So the idea of the word seems to be, To weigh, balance, try, or examine carefully.>>
The reason in Urizen has long been accepted.
However, some interpret razon as ´leanness, scantiness,´ or as
´prince´ (in Blake we see ´prince of light´), that is, ´a person who lays himself out for the good of others,´ and then the combination of one ´who is wasted with cares, perhaps´.
Anyway.
Ultimately, it remains a mystery what meaning Otacílio Melgaço intended to give to URIZEN. What we know: it´s a hamlet. Shakespearely?
During the framing and production of this Graphic Novel, O.M. created a Soundtrack to; the reader will be able to absorb the illustrations and texts while listening to a Sound Piece erected by the same author and especially for such purpose (although it is an Opus that can be metabolized independently). And he named it 'Jerusalien'. We are facing this now. And here an explanation is worth it.
Melgaço, in statement: 'Precisely because I was inspired by Blake regarding baptism (by blood), and not by his plots, I gave myself the latitude, the carte blanche to invoke two references to him in URIZEN. The epigraph & an initial quote contained in certain missive. And so, in extrapolation, a third, transfiguratively audible: Jerusalien.´ A mention of William and its Jerusalem.
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
´And did those feet in ancient time´ is a poem by W.B. from the preface to his epic Milton: A Poem in Two Books, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date of 1804 on the title page is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed c. 1808. Today it is best known as the hymn ´Jerusalem´, with music written by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. The famous orchestration was written by Sir Edward Elgar. It is not to be confused with another poem, much longer and larger in scope and also by Blake, called Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion.
It is often assumed that the poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant, travelled to what is now England and visited Glastonbury during his unknown years. However, according to British folklore scholar A. W. Smith, ´there was little reason to believe that an oral tradition concerning a visit made by Jesus to Britain existed before the early part of the twentieth century´. Instead, the poem draws on an older story, repeated in Milton's History of Britain, that Joseph of Arimathea, alone, travelled to preach to the ancient Britons after the death of Jesus. The poem's theme is linked to the Book of Revelation (3:12 and 21:2) describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a New Jerusalem. Churches in general, and the Church of England in particular, have long used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace.
In the most common interpretation of the poem, Blake asks whether a visit by Jesus briefly created heaven in England, in contrast to the ´dark Satanic Mills´ of the Industrial Revolution. Blake's poem asks four questions rather than asserting the historical truth of Christ's visit. The second verse is interpreted as an exhortation to create an ideal society in England, whether or not there was a divine visit.
In short, abstracting himself from any reference to England, O.M. changes the suffix of the word Jerusalem, and implements ´alien´. There are many metaphors, both regarding the history of the poem, the song composed by Hubert Parry and, obviously, the context of the Graphic Novel (in which, by coincidence, is included the central figure of Christianity). In a masterful act, Otacílio intersects them all.
I imagine what an excerpt from a dialogue between Mr. Blake and Mr. Melgaço would be like. Before URIZEN, now launched, the English Bard: 'If you have formed a Circle to go into
Go into it yourself & see how you would do.´
And, in an enigmatic whisper, a response would be heard:
´To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand.
And Eternity in an hour. (An) Our Eternity...´. "
(Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
"Jerusalem.
It has never been a secret how much this song always touched and moved Otacílio Melgaço. And, to talk a little more about it, we have to pronounce another name: Hubert Parry. Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet (27 February 1848 – 7 October 1918), was an English composer, teacher and historian of music.
In adapting Blake's poem Jerusalem as a unison song, Parry deployed a two-stanza format, each taking up eight lines of the original poem. He added a four-bar musical introduction to each verse and a coda, echoing melodic motifs of the song. The word ´those´ was substituted for ´these´ before ´dark satanic mills´.
Parry was initially reluctant to supply music for the campaign meeting, as he had doubts about the ultra-patriotism of Fight for Right; but knowing that his former student Walford Davies was to conduct the performance, and not wanting to disappoint either Robert Bridges or Davies, he agreed, writing it on 10 March 1916, and handing the manuscript to Davies with the comment, ´Here's a tune for you, old chap. Do what you like with it.´ Davies later recalled,
We looked at [the manuscript] together in his room at the Royal College of Music, and I recall vividly his unwonted happiness over it ... He ceased to speak, and put his finger on the note D in the second stanza where the words 'O clouds unfold' break his rhythm. I do not think any word passed about it, yet he made it perfectly clear that this was the one note and one moment of the song which he treasured ...
Davies arranged for the vocal score to be published by Curwen in time for the concert at the Queen's Hall on 28 March and began rehearsing it. It was a success and was taken up generally.
But Parry began to have misgivings again about Fight for Right, and in May 1917 wrote to the organisation's founder Sir Francis Younghusband withdrawing his support entirely. There was even concern that the composer might withdraw the song from all public use, but the situation was saved by Millicent Fawcett of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). The song had been taken up by the Suffragists in 1917 and Fawcett asked Parry if it might be used at a Suffrage Demonstration Concert on 13 March 1918. Parry was delighted and orchestrated the piece for the concert (it had originally been for voices and organ). After the concert, Fawcett asked the composer if it might become the Women Voters' Hymn. Parry wrote back, ´I wish indeed it might become the Women Voters' hymn, as you suggest. People seem to enjoy singing it. And having the vote ought to diffuse a good deal of joy too. So they would combine
happily´.
Accordingly, he assigned the copyright to the NUWSS. When that organisation was wound up in 1928, Parry's executors reassigned the copyright to the Women's Institutes, where it remained until it entered the public domain in 1968.
The song was first called ´And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time´ and the early scores have this title. The change to ´Jerusalem´ seems to have been made about the time of the 1918 Suffrage Demonstration Concert, perhaps when the orchestral score was published (Parry's manuscript of the orchestral score has the old title crossed out and ´Jerusalem´ inserted in a different hand). However, Parry always referred to it by its first title. He had originally intended the first verse to be sung by a solo female voice (this is marked in the score), but this is rare in contemporary performances. Sir Edward Elgar re-scored the work for very large orchestra in 1922 for use at the Leeds Festival. Elgar's orchestration has overshadowed Parry's own, primarily because it is the version usually used now for the Last Night of the Proms (though Sir Malcolm Sargent, who introduced it to that event in the 1950s, always used Parry's version).
This song has a curious and fascinating history, as we can see. Just like such Variations that Melgaço called Jerusalien. At the same time as he reveals to us a contemplative, perennial backbone, Otacílio proposes a series of interventions, alien to the original poetic-sound Piece, and which have intimate relationships with passages from his Graphic Novel, URIZEN. Through exuberant ingenuity, we are invited to enter a physical space, the burgh that gives the Oeuvre its name, and another, subjective one, the mind of its main character, OTTO KAVENDISH.
Recorders, ´And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time´ being recited backwards plus reversing-the-inversion, clairvoyant bells, ghoulish carnivals, screams in the crowd, circus surrealities, military marches, jazzy lyricisms, sagacious distorted guitars, wind chimes & other eclectic minutiae (spears, arrows of desire, clouds unfold, bows of burning gold, chariots of fire...) traverse this labyrinthine scenario, plot, story, tangle, chain of events, diegesis, mythos...while the Countenance Divine of Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry's notes are reflected by the Melgacian Mirror at an inflection point.
[I must add how much I've heard other versions of this poignant Paean and there are everything from the most traditional with solemn choirs to the guitars of Geoffrey Arnold Beck and David Jon Gilmour. Without forgetting, with praise, the English progressive rock supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer. However, with elements so delicate, fine, exquisite, intricate, dainty, airy, elegant, graceful, flimsy, gauzy, floaty, gossamer, diaphanous, chiffony, silky, wispy, thin, insubstantial, clean, clear, aurally purifying...and also with a certain filmy connotation that comes close to the best soundtracks made for sci-fi (I could mention some sequences from ´Blade Runner´, a Ridley Scott's 1982 noir movie, composed by Greek electronic musician Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, or, if you prefer, Vangelis); ...among all existing interpretations, with so much personality, only Otacílio was able to conceive. Undoubtedly, with extraordinary subtlety, combining respect for the primigenial Piece and incomparable inventiveness.]
Culminating the thread: The insight of creating a ´bande sonore´ for a Graphic Novel, with composer and author being one and the same, is a gift for those who will experience such a synergistic, synesthetic, syncretic involvement in. As if we could, multiartistically, immerse and levitate simultaneously.
Author and composer being one and the same. Otacílio Melgaço. Let us listen to the vox of this contemporary Delphic Bard!
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future, sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walk'd among the ancient trees,
Calling the lapsed Soul,
And weeping in the evening dew;
That might control
The starry pole,
And fallen, fallen light renew!
´O Earth, O Earth, return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass.
´Turn away no more;
Why wilt thout turn away?
The starry floor,
The wat'ry shore,
Is giv'n thee till the break of day.´
Till the dawn in URIZEN. Aye!"
(Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
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I - Campbell´s A d d e n d u m
<<If you arrived at this page through the link contained within the URIZEN eBook, this is the planned trajectory. But as O.M. made ´Jerusalien´ available also independently, perhaps there is the opposite route, for those who first landed here and intend to move forward towards Publication, be warned: As links to other digital stores are not allowed on this host, to access URIZEN, simply go to Amazon Books and search for Otacílio Melgaço. Thank you for understanding.>>
II - Paz´s A d d e n d u m
<<It is not by chance that OTTO KAVENDISH also plays the recorder. The recorder is a family of woodwind musical instruments in the group known as internal duct flutes: flutes with a whistle mouthpiece, the fipple flutes. The English verb ´record´ (from Middle French recorder, early thirteenth century) meant ´to learn by heart, to commit to memory, to go over in one's mind, to recite´, but it was not used in English to refer to playing music until the sixteenth century, when it gained the meaning ´silently practicing a tune´ or ´sing or render in song´ (both almost exclusively referring to songbirds), long after the recorder had been named.>>
III - The character Urizen is first directly mentioned in Blake's "A Song of Liberty" (1793) where he is first described in his dispute with Orc. He is described as a "starry king". In To Nobodaddy, he is given the title "Father of Jealousy" and he is an enslaver. In America a Prophecy, he is the evil God who rules during the Enlightenment. The work also describes how Urizen created the world. This was followed by the Songs of Experience (1794) where he appears as the creator of the Tyger and in many of the poems: "Earth's Answer", "The Tyger", "The Human Abstract" and "A Divine Image". He is mentioned later that year in Europe a Prophecy and it is in the work that Urizen is freed from his bounds and he opens the Book of Brass in response to the American revolution.
In the Book of Urizen, Urizen is an eternal self-focused being that creates itself out of eternity, and, it is only Urizen, the representation of abstractions and is an abstraction of the human self that exists in the beginning. Eventually, he creates the rest of creation but is tormented from the rest of the Eternal essence. Urizen is seen as the essence of the eternal priest and is opposed by Los, the eternal prophet. Parts of the story were later revised in The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania: The Book of Ahania describes Urizen's relationship with his son Fuzon, and the Book of Los (1795) describes Urizen's creations from Los's viewpoint. The Song of Los (1795) describes how Urizen's laws are given to humanity and their destructive effects. The work ends with Orc's appearance and Urizen weeping.
Urizen appears within Blake's illustrations of Job as an image of Apollo. He and his realm are described in Blake's Milton a Poem, and he is said to have a throne of silver/love. His realm included his children and was surrounded by justice and eternal science. The work also describes Urizen's Satanic fall. The Urizen of Milton is in the form of reason, and it is he that Milton follows. He appears again in the image "Milton's Dream" as illustrated for Il Penseroso. In the image, Urizen is with images of despair and is interfering with the image of the true God.
In Vala, or The Four Zoas, Urizen was said to have been born as the son of Albion and Vala, and is the fourth son. He was made the leader of Heaven's host and commanded the material sun. The work also describes his fall. Urizen appears in Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion in a form similar to the previous works. Urizen is the organiser of the universe while Los is the forger. He creates Natural Religion, and, in his returned form after Albion awakes, he is a farmer;
IV - James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX.
Ensor is considered to be an innovator in 19th-century art. Although he stood apart from other artists of his time, he significantly influenced such 20th-century artists as Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, George Grosz, Alfred Kubin, Wols, Felix Nussbaum, and other expressionist and surrealist painters of the 20th century. As Los Angeles County Museum of Art CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan has explained: "James Ensor's signature style – his radical distortion of form, his ambiguous space, his riotous color, his muddled surfaces, and his proclivity for the bizarre – both anticipated and influenced modernist movements from symbolism and German expressionism to dada and surrealism."
Ensor's works are in many public collections, notably the Modern Art Museum of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and Mu.ZEE in Ostend. Major works by Ensor are also in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. A collection of his letters is held in the Contemporary Art Archives of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels. The Ensor collections of the Flemish fine art museums can all be seen at the James Ensor Online Museum.
Ensor has been paid homage by contemporary painters and artists in other media. The Belgian artist Pierre Alechinsky (b. 1927) and noted member of COBRA, painted The Tomb of Ensor (1961) in homage to Ensor, which is now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He is the subject of a song, "Meet James Ensor", recorded in 1994 by the alternative rock duo They Might Be Giants. The 1996 Belgian movie, Camping Cosmos, was inspired by drawings of James Ensor, in particular Carnaval sur la plage (1887), La mort poursuivant le troupeau des humains (1896), and Le bal fantastique (1889). The film's director, Jan Bucquoy, is also the creator of a comic Le Bal du Rat mort inspired by Ensor.
An exhibition of approximately 120 works by James Ensor was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2009, and then at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, October 2009 – February 2010. The Getty mounted a similar exhibition June–September 2014. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibited Ensor's 1887 masterpiece The Temptation of St. Anthony from November 2014 through January 2015, along with other important paintings and etchings. From October 2016 through January 2017, the Royal Academy of Arts in London hosted a major exhibition of Ensor's paintings and etchings, curated by the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. The black artist Kara Walker painted a controversial work, "Christ's Entry into Journalism", inspired by Ensor in 2017.
The yearly philanthropic "Bal du Rat mort" (Dead Rat Ball) in Ostend continues a tradition begun by Ensor and his friends in 1898.
In the movie Halloween (1978), a poster of one of Ensor's self-portraits appears on the wall of a room in Laurie Strode's (Jamie Lee Curtis) home.
...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.
