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M is for Music, Mozart, Mystery, Melga​ç​o, Mankind (Piece for Strings & Choral) {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 29​:​00]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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1.

about

M
i s
f o r
M u s i c,
M o z a r t,
M y s t e r y,
M e l g a ç o,
M a n k i n d

- P i e c e F o r
S t r i n g s & C h o r a l -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 29:00] 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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"´M is for Music, Mozart, Mystery, Melgaço, Mankind - Piece for Strings & Choral -´: the other Turn of the Screw." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion.´ (Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart)

1- Peter Greenaway is a British film director, screenwriter, and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular. Common traits in his film are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.

2- ´M is for Man, Music, Mozart´ (1991)

Focusing on the description contained in the P.G. official site, ´this is an entertaining mix of animation, theatre and dance from Greenaway, accompanied by the music of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. The film is staged on a set based on a 17th century Theatre of Anatomy. It begins with a woman singing words through the alphabet until the letter M is reached. Having arrived at the letter M, the central letter of the alphabet, the Gods decided to use it to make Man. Parts of the body and words beginning with the letter M are displayed, while the naked, flour white performers assemble the Man. The onscreen text explains that having created Man, it was necessary to give him movement; having given him movement it follows that he should have music; and having invented music, it was necessary to invent Mozart in order to have Perfect Music.´

3- More than a decade after, Otacílio Melgaço engenders & performs a particular kind of paraphrase. But there´s no proper similarities beyond that;

3.1- Andriessen´s soundtrack is for ensemble and (supposedly) jazz singer. Sometimes it reminds me traces of operetta. Melgaço intersects a more experimental approach than that adopted by Louis. Does it through indomitable, sharp, multidimensional strings and the voices in choir - intriguingly closest to sacred music -. A recitation in German also contributes to the shocking fluxuosity of the hyperdynamic work. [Perchance, aside from the extreme Melgacian avant-garde - more explicitly in his idiosyncratic course of action for violins/violas/cellos, both may communicate if we think of peculiar allusions to Mozartian facets];

3.2- I always had the view that aesthetic conceptions of British director (starting with aforementioned Renaissancean & Barroquean nuances as well as its sophisticated editing work) flirt a lot with proposals musically erected by Otacílio. I call attention to even a lineage: in, for instance, this sense of innovation in a technical alphabet that expands the artistic syntax, other names should also be pronounced in the same analogy as, for example, Jean-Luc Godard. To cite a more tangible sample among many: Godard, in his first 3D film (´Adieu au Langage´, 2014), makes us see, in certain moments, an image through the right eye and other through the left - simultaneously. Melgaço, before that, already was working with distinct sources in distinct channels (notoriously disparate information for each ear). This had been done anteriorly in the history of music (if we think of the twentieth century) but either sporadically or not radically (usually by means of complementary instruments; failing to give, how can I say?, at least - and the figure of speech is fascinating -: one round of three hundred and sixty degrees in the brain - if you know what I mean). Otacílio, before Jean-Luc (and certainly also because the technology of sound production propitiated it to him before the cinematographic) reaches the analogous edge, proposing extreme experiments that the human perception (if open to challenges and constructive developments) will be able to enjoy - expanding itself, in fact.

[> A reference that best fulfills the role of being introductory, you can check
melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/legi-o-estrangeira-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-01-43-32 <]

Retaking the prism of the lineage, the differential - pointing to new paths - is that possibly O.M., in his harvest, catapults it (with greater constancy and linearity and fluidity) to ´ultimate consequences´;

3.3- There´s a quibble that enables the inclusion of own last name (Melgaço) in the title of the Piece - which only reinforces, with justice and precision, the incomparable authorality here. An irresistible sequence starting with the letter M certainly not would leave it out. Apropos, the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist already had done it in his ´Vampire of Düsseldorf´ melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/m-der-vampir-von-d-sseldorf-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-44-33 (incidentally, another reference to the cinema);

3.4- A millimetric exception in terms of such distinctions: proof of detailed criteria assumed by Otacílio is the duration of its creation, accurately equal to the preceding: twenty-nine minutes, not a second longer - no more no less;

3.5- ´M is for Music, Mozart, Mystery, Melgaço, Mankind´ (2016)

O.M. changes the order quite logical stipulated by Peter. As if God first had created the Music, then Mozart, flooded His world of Mysteries (by means of sounds and what Wolfgang Amadeus makes with them), ... mysteries bathing Melgaço (after all, one that revives - develops - renews such cosmogony) and finally inhabiting it - His orb - with the Mankind. In this light, it makes M(ozart) & M(elgaço) mythological proto-humans. The metaphor is beautiful, interesting, bold, impertinent. Just like the words of genius born in Salzburg: ´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.´

I'll just beyond.
I´ll try to define what are the movements and their borders:
i - from 0:00 to 05:16 | Music {The Genesiac Frenzy}
ii - from 05:16 to 13:07 | Mozart {The Creaturization of Perfection}
iii - from 13:07 to 19:15 | Mystery {The Edenic Sonic Secrets}
iv - from 19:15 to 22:28 | Melgaço {The Edenic Sonic Secrets unraveled}
v - from 22:28 to 29:00 | Mankind {The Settlement}

Forgiveness for my diablerie (not towards Otacílio but to the ´Lord´, if He exists): perhaps the only divine mistake was the final part of the sequence. Who knows His/our world would be better without the Humanity? Yes, it´s indecorously paradoxical my quest. One way or another, it´s too late for that. ´To be or not to be´(?); no, no. To be or never have been ... (that´s the real question).

4- At least, to be an apprentice. Peter Greenaway once said: ´I always think that art is one of the most wonderful exciting curious ways to learn.´

´M is for Music, Mozart, Mystery, Melgaço, Mankind - Piece for Strings & Choral -´; it makes us learn more and more about contemporary culture - wonderfully / excitingly / curiously, in that sequel." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - ´M is for Man ...´ is not dissimilar to Prospero's Books in the way it is presented and performed. It is a merry, playful and lively piece.

"A commissioned project, made for TV in honor the the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death, this is a highly avant-garde piece of music, theater and dance, set to an original score by the controversial Dutch composer Louis Andriessen - who would later collaborate with Greenaway on the operas ´Rosa´ and ´Writing to Vermeer´." (Josh Martin);

II - Louis Andriessen is a Dutch composer and pianist based in Amsterdam. He is a lecturer at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He was recipient of the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in 1959.

...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.

credits

released June 6, 2016

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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O t a c í l i o
M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | engineering & sound design | art design [O.M., after Lange] | production | direction}

Special Guests: Zycluz Quartett | Nausícaaa Choir

Estúdio Yoknapotawpha/BR + Unidade Euromobile

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
from
Minas Gerais,
Brazil.
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Official (English) Site
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"Music is like a bewitched Mistress." (Paul Klee)
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