C o n c e r t i n o F o r R a s p u t i n
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
- Seven Movements for Organ, Drums and Percussion -
[duration 34:54] 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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"Rasputin meant ´where two rivers meet´, a phrase that describes an area from where he was born in Siberia. ´Where two rivers meet´ is also a proper definition of this melgacian phono creation. Two - or more - sonic streams! It´s beyond the crossroads, classical-and-jazzy. Flows like an intriguing miscegenation - far beyond the stereotypes of typical mergers. Accurate technique providing a compositional architecture of rare beauty and with an atmosphere that borders on mysticism.
An almost flirting with the golden phase of Alice Coltrane but under the aura of, perhaps, Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen. I can also hear echoes of Pachelbel until Kagel, for example. Becomes difficult to cite references if we´re before certainly peculiar traits contained in this Concertino!
Two facets of Brazilian composer seems to me very clear: how expansively Mr. Melgaço explores the timbres of the instruments and how he constructs his improvisations, in this Piece, not exactly with scales but panoramic block chords. He turns into harmonic landscapes which would be the improvisatory fragmentations! It´s amazing! There is the fluidity of jazz hovering over the ceremonious classical magma. if I consider musical eclipses, ´Konzertstück´ sonically is not ELP; structurally is not Brubeck; syntactically is not Dr. Lonnie Smith; (...) is actually O.M.!
Revisiting Rasputin. How many banks have the rivers? Are two, three would be? The third bank of the rivers; in the third bank is the great meeting of the waters. The best thing to do is dive into these purifying tonic liquidity ... ´Waters in movement´ ... Seven or eight movements ... Where will be a meeting with the kinetic and mysteriously evaporating, ascencional Melgacian music! ... and it´s our utmost privilege!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
"In terms of recent releases, one of the most interesting and challenging phonograph albums that intertwines contemporary languages of classical and improvisatory music. Sometimes it seems to me incursions by epicenter of a pagan ceremony. At other times...an exotic hybrid of sidereal Buxtehude and Free Jazz. Very exciting!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
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I - Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869 - 1916) was a Russian peasant, mystic, faith healer and private adviser to the Romanovs. He became an influential figure in Saint Petersburg after August 1915 when Tsar Nicolas II took command of the army at the front.
There is much uncertainty over Rasputin's life and the degree of influence he exerted over the Tsar and his government. Accounts are often based on dubious memoirs, hearsay and legend. While his influence and role may have been exaggerated, historians agree that his presence played a significant part in the increasing unpopularity of the Tsar and Alexandra Feodorovna his wife, and the downfall of the Russian Monarchy. Rasputin was killed as he was seen by both the left and right to be the root cause of Russia's despair during World War I.
II - Rasputin was more multifaceted and more significant than the myths that grew up around him:
Rasputin was neither a monk nor a saint; he never belonged to any order or religious sect, but he impressed many people with his knowledge and ability to explain the Bible in an uncomplicated way.
It was widely believed that Rasputin had a gift for curing bodily ailments. "In the mind of the Tsarina, Rasputin was closely associated with the health of her son, and the welfare of the monarchy" and eager to see him as a holy fool, but his enemies saw him as a debauched religious charlatan and a lecher.
Brian Moynahan describes him as "a complex figure, intelligent, ambitious, idle, generous to a fault, spiritual, and – utterly – amoral." He was an unusual mix, a muzhik, prophet and [at the end of his life] a party-goer.
"At first sight Rasputin looks like a symbol of decadence and obscurantism, of the complete corruption of the imperial court in which he was able to float to the top. And so he has usually been treated in the history books. The temptation to wallow in the rhetoric of the lower depths in describing him is almost irresistible. And yet the truth is somewhat simpler: Rasputin was only able to play the part he did because of the dispersal of authority which very much deepened after Stolypin's death, and because of the bewildered and unhappy isolation in which the royal couple found themselves."
"To the nobles and Nicholas’s family members, Rasputin was a dual character who could go straight from praying for the royal family to the brothel [bathhouse] down the street."
According to Eulalio he was "a charismatic and cunning man, who largely exploited his "common people" and sectarian background to become a major player in the Russian political scene."
The conspirators, who did not accept a peasant being so close to the Imperial couple, had hoped that Rasputin's removal would cause the Tsarina to retreat from political activities. They also believed that
Rasputin was an agent of Germany, but he was more of a pacifist, and opposed to all wars.
In Russia, Rasputin is seen by many ordinary people and clerics, among them the late Elder Nikolay Guryanov, as a righteous man. However, Alexy II of Moscow said that any attempt to make a saint of
Rasputin would be "madness".
According to Dominic Lieven "more rubbish has been written on Rasputin than on any other figure in Russian history".
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated on Sunday 28 June 1914 (New Style); two weeks later Rasputin was attacked in his home village on 29 June 1914 (Old Style), so it is not "... one of the great coincidences of history..."
...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.
