M a k e D o A n d M e n d

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 30:00] 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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"´In Music, Variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.´ For the first time Otacílio Melgaço favors the works of other composers - giving them featured in almost entire album - according as proposes unusual medleys! The variations are idiosyncratic. In my opinion, are among a fascinating tribute and the whole context of unique own compositions. The instrument is the Piano. The Melgacian stylistic is explicit: each intervention reveals unexpected plurality timbristic, an unbelievable ability to morph sounds. Every Piece earns original solutions to the harmonies, the generated entanglement is spellbinding. Melodies are more detected in this record but they nevertheless suffer inherently peculiar interference. The rhythmicity is intriguing, establishing multidimensions. If it´s apparent several pianos played, we can see how reigns a phantasmatic orchestration nexus. There are concomitantly contrapuntal spasms besides enigmatic connections amongst elected honored. Taking into account any successive citation, opens up an amazing seminal approach. (...) Anyway, it's a gifted disc in sensitizing capacity if we analyze the impeccable choice of musics and also keeps us in a constant state of levitation on behalf of its exploratory and expansive directrix. It would be customary to a common artist to remain in a comfort zone. It's what most do. But not O.M. When he uses (with resourcefulness) dissonances or principles of stochasticity or even ferments colorful harmonics: continues to take risks, continues to challenge us. The difference is that, in my point of view, a contemporary musician (not forgetting > Otacílio is far beyond that) often does it ´against us´ - the listeners; Melgaço does on our side - we are his allies, not guinea pigs or masochistic human targets.

There are divers bright spots. I will stress three: 1- Mesmerizing reverberations of Olivier Messiaen, another composer that Otacílio estimates; 2- The exuberant power of the Piece that gives name to the phonographic album, looks more like a sonic Tsunami!; 3- A dreamlike atmosphere that accompanies us throughout the hearing, probably confirming the words of Wassily Kandinsky: ´Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.´ What more is there to say? What more is there to make? Make Do and Mend!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Again O.M. is quite happy in choosing the title of one of his audible offspring. The possibility of a rich analogy only highlights the allure with this creation. ´Make Do and Mend´ was a pamphlet issued by the British Ministry of Information in the midst of WWII. It was intended to provide housewives with useful tips on how to be both frugal and stylish in times of harsh rationing. With its thrifty design ideas and advice on reusing old clothing, the pamphlet was an indispensable guide for households. Readers were advised to create pretty ‘decorative patches’ to cover holes in warn garments; unpick old jumpers to re-knit chic alternatives; turn men’s clothes into women’s; as well as darn, alter and protect against the ‘moth menace’. An updated version of the book was recently released to coincide with the economic recession, offering similar frugal advice for 21st century families.

Plus. The contrast between sound aura and cover image is exciting. ´Mystification´ and ´demystification´. ´The ineffable´ and ´do it (for) yourself´. ´Eminent composers´ and ´freedom to approach them without subservience´. The Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist holds us with one hand, shakes us with the other (moreover, as they - the analysands - used to say about Lacan, the French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Mere coincidence?). And, in this variant Melgacian case, all containing a deep lyricism / even numinous spectra, reinventing structures that gain new achievements and bewitchments. ´Dazzle´, an appropriate word to describe what ´Make Do and Mend´ is definitely capable of causing us.

In Sonny´s Blues, James Baldwin writes ´I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano. It's made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there's only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.´ That's what Otacílio Melgaço actually does: Everything.

An addendum to exquisite surmise. Impossible not to imagine, playing his surrealistic pianos (or maybe the same but under its metamorphism timbristic), O.M., at the summit of an ivory tower or atop a wuthering heights. Not hermetically, on the contrary, is delightfully assimilable but without losing the high state of mind. Playing his surrealistic pianos, O.M., atop a wuthering heights or at the summit of an ivory tower, bringing Villa-Lobos, Orff, Ravel, Purcell, Gluck, Bach, Debussy, Beethoven and Chopin back to life. In fact, praising the immortality that they all are entitled. And, I apologize for daring however, in the name of a Work already in altisonant figure, including Melgaço own." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Many classical and later composers have written compositions in the form of variations on a theme by another composer. Many of these works are called simply "Variations on a Theme of/by ...". Although the first isolated example emerged in the 14th century, works in theme-and-variation form first emerge in the early sixteenth century. Possibly the earliest published example is the diferencias for vihuela by Luis de Narváez (1538). A favorite form of variations in Renaissance music was divisions, a type in which the basic rhythmic beat is successively divided into smaller and smaller values. The basic principle of beginning with simple variations and moving on to more elaborate ones has always been present in the history of the variation form, since it provides a way of giving an overall shape to a variation set, rather than letting it just form an arbitrary sequence;

II - Skilled musicians can often improvise variations on a theme. This was commonplace in the Baroque era, when the da capo aria, particularly when in slow tempo, required the singer to be able to improvise a variation during the return of the main material.

Musicians of the Classical era also could improvise variations; both Mozart and Beethoven made powerful impressions on their audiences when they improvised. Modern listeners can get a sense of what these improvised variations sounded like by listening to published works that evidently are written transcriptions of improvised performances, in particular Beethoven's Fantasia in G Minor, Op. 77, and Mozart's Variations on an Aria by Gluck, K. 455.

Improvisation of elaborate variations on a popular theme is one of the core genres of jazz. Improvisation by means of spontaneous variations, ornaments, embellishments and/or alterations to a melody is the basis of most sub-Saharan African music (traditional and pop) extending from melody and harmony to form and rhythmic embellishments.

...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.