L A C R I M O S A

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 25:26] 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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´Lacrimosa´ belongs to a Cycle called
<<C-L-A-S-S-I-C-A-L-E-F-A-C-T-O-R-Y>>.
They are Melgacian reinterpretations or inventions
from works by the following eleven c o m p o s e r s:

GLUCK

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/maloja-snake-or-variations-on-gluck-m-lodie-from-orfeo-ed-euridice-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-37-11

PURCELL

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/when-i-am-laid-in-earth-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-17-00

BACH

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/veit-bach-otac-lio-melga-o-classicalefactory-series-duration-39-54

SATIE

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/r-veries-diurnes-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-41-38

PACHELBEL

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/octachordum-apollinis-otac-lio-melga-o-classicalefactory-series-pachelbel-duration-17-17

HANDEL

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/e-che-sospiri-la-libert-otac-lio-melga-o-classicalefactory-series-handel-duration-15-15

DELIBES

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/sous-le-d-me-pais-otac-lio-melga-o-classicalefactory-series-delibes-duration-11-11

CARLOS GOMES

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/salvador-rosa-otac-lio-melga-o-classicalefactory-series-carlos-gomes-duration-29-59

BEETHOVEN

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/a-clock-world-orange-otac-lio-melga-o-classicalefactory-series-beethoven-duration-25-06

DOWLAND

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/a-pilgrimes-solace-otac-lio-melga-o-classicalefactory-series-dowland-duration-01-13-34

And,
In the present context,
Wolfgang Amadeus M O Z A R T.

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"Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem. Amen.

Don Juan, also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary, fictional libertine. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest) by Tirso de Molina, and an 1787 opera, Don Giovanni, with music by Mozart and a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. By linguistic extension from the name of the character, ´Don Juan´ has become a generic expression for a womanizer, and stemming from this, ´Don Juanism´ is a non-clinical psychiatric descriptor.

The bond that Otacílio Melgaço creates is very interesting, based on two Mozartian references (an Opera - here, present in a sound fragment - and a Requiem - here, through the title of the album and of the piece itself -), as he relates such wealthy Lothario [perverting the original plot, by Melgaço ironically nicknamed ´Il Commendatore´] who devotes a lifetime to seducing women and a Mass for the dead (Latin: Missa pro defunctis) or Mass of the dead (Latin: Missa defunctorum) offered for the repose of the soul of one deceased person.

The aphorism that Don Juan lives by is: ´Tan largo me lo fiáis´ (translated as ´What a long term you are giving me!´). This is his way of indicating that he is young and that death is still distant – he thinks he has plenty of time to repent later for its sins. O.M. contradicts that. In an idiosyncratic manner, Otacílio promotes the exequies of such a figure. [And it is the soundtrack to a funereal ritual that we can now hear.] In other words, the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist addresses the theme of ´Don Juanism´ and proposes the burial of that, a solemn act that seems to me deeply in line with the times that we are living in both the fair achievements of feminist rights and the revision of the contemporary male configuration.

The conceptual monumentality and atmospheric complexity invoked by Otacílio make his Variations a compositional Totem mesmerizingly worthy of all Mozart's exuberance. The fascinating distinction is that, as in the viscera of the key world of photography, O.M. seems to take us from ´positive´ to ´negative´, that is, he reverses (Mozartian flamboyant) revelations until we reach the juice, the pulp, the sap, the semen: obscure, arcane, (Melgacian clairvoyant) Delphic." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"´LACRIMOSA | Variation on Mozart´s Don Giovanni / Il Commendatore´ could be defined through Wolfgang Amadeus' own locutions: ´All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak — and speak in such a way that people will remember it. One must not make oneself cheap here - that is a cardinal point - or else one is done. Whoever is most impertinent has the best chance.´ More and more the Melgacian Sonic Universe speaks, and through the highest (and audacious, Daedalian, memorable) impertinence!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period.

Born in Salzburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in Vienna, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his early death at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized.

He composed more than 600 works, many of which are acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is considered among the greatest classical composers of all time, and his influence on Western music is profound. Ludwig van Beethoven composed his early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote: "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years";

II - Don Giovanni is generally regarded as one of Mozart's supreme achievements and one of the greatest operas of all time, and it has proved a fruitful subject for writers and philosophers. A staple of the standard operatic repertoire, it is ninth on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas of the 2018–19 season. Critic Fiona Maddocks described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with libretti by Ponte". It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theater (of Bohemia), now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. Da Ponte's libretto was billed as a dramma giocoso, a common designation of its time that denotes a mixing of serious and comic action. Mozart entered the work into his catalogue as an opera buffa. Although sometimes classified as comic, it blends comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements;

III - The Lacrimosa (Latin for "weeping/tearful"), also a name that derives from Our Lady of Sorrows, a title given to The Virgin Mary, is part of the Dies Irae sequence in the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass. Its text comes from the Latin 18th and 19th stanzas of the sequence. Many composers, including Mozart, Berlioz, and Verdi have set the text as a discrete movement of the Requiem.

Lacrimosa dies illa
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem. Amen.

Full of tears will be that day
When from the ashes shall arise
The guilty man to be judged;
Therefore spare him, O God,
Merciful Lord Jesus,
Grant them eternal rest. Amen.

IV - About <<C-L-A-S-S-I-C-A-L-E-F-A-C-T-O-R-Y>>,
learn more about it here: pt-br.facebook.com/otaciliomelgacoofficial/photos/a.396017330450138/3525687994149707

...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.