P i p i r i p a u

3 F a n t a s i a s P a r a Ó r g ã o

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:03:34] 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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"The Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Otacílio Melgaço gathers a fascinating religious relic of his state Minas Gerais and the hieratic sonority of the majestic Organ. Three mysterious Fantasies that would be best treated as a rotund, perplexed, oracular
T r i n i t y!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´Os músicos tocam baixinho uma suave música fininha
Que sobe pras estrelinhas
Do céu pintado de azul.
Gira e regira na praça
A eterna zanga-burrinha
– Tão engraçadinha
Olha a calma do pescador
Pescando sempre o mesmo peixe
Com o mesmo anzol.
Olha o barqueiro que não é Pedro...
Os meninos perfilados germânicos
Entram na igreja
E saem depressa
E tornam a entrar.
(E tornam a sair)
A atmosfera febril de trabalho
Ferreiros sapateiros mexendo
A calma das casas subindo a ladeira
Descendo a ladeira e os bichos
Cândidos bichos de papelão
Rodeando o menino Jesus que abençoa aquilo tudo!
Meus olhos mineiros namoram o presepe
e dizem alegres: Mas que bonito!´ (Carlos Drummond de Andrade)

If a nativity scene was the inspiration to O.M. engender his fanciful and fantastic audible P-i-p-i-r-i-p-a-u, we are therefore at the Christmas works niche. There´s a long tradition of creations (musical, pictorial, literary etc.) that are concerned with this sacred issue; no doubt we witnessed an offspring - ´3 Fantasias para Órgão´ - that does historical justice to the high level required for those able to portray - having or not a religious belief, but especially through an artistic prism - the birth of Jesus. Being more precise, birth life passion death and resurrection.

An exquisite detail is the album cover. The image captures the mechanisms that make the ´Presepe´ be in motion. And musically we received a beautiful lesson of Otacílio. Verify as at times - hear all the first Fantasy and the undulations of the third, there´s a sense of repetition that reproduces the crib gears. Plus: the typesetting I find extremely ingenious! Typographically ... the result of Melgaço as designer. The way the letters are distinguished and undistinguished in relation to the background is just great! A metaphor for how the sound is mixed with the crib´s viscera - ie the entirety of its apparatus, the hidden machine. And consequently we are guided - audibly - to the ´other´ side, the visible christic saga. Therefore, all is revealed from the inside to outside. How should be, even metaphorically. (Perhaps the prevalence of red is a symbology of Jesus and His blood, by the way. If people would remember more of the mythology around the shedding of This ruby, maybe the world would be very different today - certainly less claret of men would be shed now. I hope these ruminations are under the lens of scholars, also of us thinkers and inquirers and mostly under the auspices of works of art as

P i p i r i p a u

3 F a n t a s i a s P a r a Ó r g ã o)

The presence of improvisation - and I highlight the introspective vastness of the second Piece - is also noteworthy. This is rare or practically impossible to hear in sacred sound expressions. Linked to the status quo and even not necessarily. A Fantasia - a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation - grounded in nativity is a evidence of the incredible inventiveness and yet iconoclasm of the engenderer. (A light and collateral addendum: To my joy and a great example given the world - whether believers or not, the current Pope of the commonly reactionary Catholic Church, Francis/Francisco - Jorge Mario Bergoglio - miraculously contradicts what I will write below and I pray to God that no one at the Vatican offers a poisoned tea to finally holy - precisely because he´s so humanist - Vicar of Christ: religions and religious generically tend to be very dogmatic, strict and not allow audacious questions.) If religions and religious assuredly generically tend to be very dogmatic, strict and not allow audacious questions; resuming the thread - the improvised element is aerator, bold, pointing in advanced directions - wider and plural.

There´s a curious Shakespearean note: ´This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance or death.´ In the solemn Epiphany of Melgaço, there´s the manifestation of nativity, chance and death. I do not know if necessarily in that order. What I do know: there are divine oddly three. A triadic Fantasy! Yes, Shakespeare and Melgaço were right." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - O Presépio (Crib) "Pipiripau" is a work that depicts, in 45 scenes, from birth to resurrection of Christ. It consists of 580 figures in motion tailored to the daily life of a city, with its variety of arts and crafts. Its construction by Raimundo Machado de Azevedo. The Crib of Pipiripau began to be built in 1906, when Raimundo was twelve, in the former Cologne Américo Werneck, region called Pipiripau (Minas Gerais state, Brazil - which is currently the Agronomic Institute district of Belo Horizonte). The inspiration came when, as a child, his mother took him to church and he watched the cribs of churches and neighbors; it was simple and without movement. He had then wanted to build your own at home. His family was poor, no money to buy the necessary equipment for his first crib, but he had the idea of getting the material which find and ended up creating a masterpiece of mining popular culture. Over time, began to give movement to the figures based on the everyday life of the interior and, in 1922, Raimundo was working in Gravatá Company where he found a Portuguese sculptor and learned ways to make plaster. Since 1984, the crib Pipiripau was listed by the Heritage Institute National Artistic (Iphan) and today is open to the public at the Natural History Museum of UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), where he had been transferred in 1976 for both presentations with movement and to meet stopped. In 2006 the crib celebrated hundred years of its creation and was visited by thousands of people;

II - www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUM99y1NDts;

III - The Fantasia (in English: Fantasy) is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form (as with the impromptu). The term was first applied to music during the 16th century, at first to refer to the imaginative musical "idea" rather than to a particular compositional genre. Its earliest use as a title was in German keyboard manuscripts from before 1520, and by 1536 is found in printed tablatures from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. From the outset, the fantasia had the sense of "the play of imaginative invention", particularly in lute or vihuela composers such as Francesco Canova da Milano and Luis de Milán. Its form and style consequently ranges from the freely improvisatory to the strictly contrapuntal, and also encompasses more or less standard sectional forms;

IV - According to the musicologist Donald Francis Tovey, "the term Fantasia would adequately cover all post-classical forms of Concerto".

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
Wikipedia was the main 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.