S a l o n D e s R e f u s é s

C o n c e r t o
P o u r
P e r c u s s i o n, O r g u e, F l û t e E t C o r d e s

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:14:58] 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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"Solve et Coagula.

Mr. Melgaço is a Master Mixer. The choice of instruments for a composition: how, by singular perspicacity, they should combine, complement, interpenetrate ... is a thorough Art, pure (pardon the unorthodox term) alchemy.

[Giving a providential pursuance to my metaphor: Paracelsus, Isaac Newton, August Strindberg were serious personalities seriously dedicated to that. Alchemy is a philosophical and protoscientific tradition practiced throughout Europe, Egypt and Asia. It aimed to purify, mature, and perfect certain objects. Regardless of what is myth or empiricism, among other quintessential things, it would not be what the Artist does?]

Percussion, organ, flute and strings. U-n-r-e-j-e-c-t-a-b-l-e. Vertices and balance. Intensity and subtlety. Dynamic and conductive thread. Density and ascension. A Concert that, with superior insight, amalgamates organicity, rituality, sempiternality." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Firstly, the way O.M. expressed the concept (which was its north) through the cover image is worthy of all the credit. Both - the graphical beauty and the high symbolic level - debouch in an exemplary, irreproachable semiotic spillway.

The Salon des Refusés, French for ´Exhibition of Rejects´.

Carol Hendricks (Art History Blogger) brings us a clear contextualization:

>> In 1863 for the first time ever an exhibit was created in Paris from the artwork which was rejected by the jurors of the Salon of the French Academy.

The French Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture was founded in 1648. The Academy set a very high standard for artists and had a specific set of guidelines for students to follow. French artists of that period sought to create art in the manner of Ancient Classical works, Raphael and Poussin (1594-1665). There was a strict hierarchy in the importance of a painting based on subject matter, the apex being history painting and still-life painting was at the bottom (still-life in French is ´morte nature´ or dead nature).

In 1666 the French Academy in Rome opened, and then a century later the British Royal Academy in 1768. The Academies provided a place to train artists worthy of royal commissions. Because of its association with royalty and the upper classes in society, the Academy was closed by the public during the French Revolution in 1789.

In 1795 the academy was re-opened as a state school under the name of École des Beaux-Arts. In the École students learned drawing, anatomy and perspective. The new Academy, which was opened again as a branch of the school in 1816, also taught history painting. The tradition of a strict hierarchy of work continued, painting in a classical tradition or history painting was still considered the highest form of art.

Besides being an art school, the French Academy also held regular ´Salons´ or art exhibitions, biannually and later annually of both students and members of the art world who wanted to exhibit their work and attract the attention of possible patrons. Since the hierarchy and guidelines at the Academy were so rigid, there were hundreds of artists who were rejected from each of the Salons by the jury.

Of the works that were accepted to the 1863 Salon, Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus was the recipient of much acclaim and was even purchased by Napolean III. Cabanel made several copies of this painting which was influenced both by ancient art and the Renaissance.

However in 1863 more than half of the works of art, over 2,000, that were submitted by artists were refused. Which is why in that same year the first ´Salon des Refusés´ was held, giving those artists another chance to exhibit their work. The idea for this alternative Salon was that of Napolean III who felt that the jury was much too strict and that the public should have a chance to decide for itself.

As Robert Rosenblum writes in the book 19th-Century Art:

´Napoleon III himself, having seen samples of the rejects, could find little difference between them and those selected for the official Salon, and the temporary exhibition space seemed a happy compromise. This so-called Salon des Refusés, however, immediately took on the stature of a counterestablishment manifestation, where artists at war with authority could be seen and where the public could go either to jeer or to enlarge its ideas of what a work of art could be.´ <<

Obviously the title of the Melgacian Concerto is satiric. But the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist goes far beyond.

Above anything, the sound work ´Salon des Refusés´, to me, is spatial. It´s a special space, a planned place, a nimbused niche, a habitat audible ... where the public could go to enlarge its ideas of what a work of art ought to be because the same public - HERE certainly privileged - should have a chance to decide for itself.

In this SHOWroom, shoud have and has. To this resonant Exhibition, the honorable public could go and goes.

´Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others´, uttered Jonathan Swift. I must deduce then: Hearing is the art of listening to what is not audible (or deafening) to others. What once might seem a gift unreachable, Melgaço turns it into a choice, an autonomous decision. He - as the musician who always was and under the measureless wings of his creation -, an authentic reference of what Art is and how all of us nowadays can absorb it, allow ourselves to be challenged by it, delight us with it, learn from it, ... transcending ourselves. For those who want to embrace
(1) the listenable
and
(2) further.
Under a vivifying deepening,
both
go on to become indiscernible, apropos. For those who want, for them - there´s only one thing to be rejected: a shallow, perfunctory, ephemeral relationship with high culture.

I know it's a controversial issue but for me and being very concise, in line with the words of Roger Scruton (English philosopher who specialises in aesthetics), high culture is ´the self-consciousness of a society´. This gives us a clue to the deconstruction of prejudice that high culture could be a form of elitism. It´s, in short, about a repository of a broad cultural knowledge. It´s the set of ´emanations´ - mainly works of art, literature, the own philosophy ... held in the highest esteem by, thus, a culture that establishes a shared frame of reference among those who constitute a society. An absence of high culture would be superseded by a ´culture of fake´ that, and here I evoke Zygmunt Bauman, in a world so ´liquid´, already seems pandemic. I think we would be hypocrites or overly politically correct if we alienate ourselves with respect to this. Precisely for this reason, in our context, I repeat: for those who want (to embrace such ascensional sense), for them - there´s only one thing to be rejected (in our incessant artistic emancipation process): a shallow, perfunctory, ephemeral relationship with high culture.

Resuming the thread: for everyone who wish to go yonder, just knock on the doors of this ´Salon´, they will be unlocked. What is the password, which is the riddle of the Sphinx? Do not worry, stay with your ears wide open and ... just ... enter.

In a net, fluid, (increasingly) diluvial world where everything tends to be a general jam, some will be Medulla. Not by a selective illumination but free spirit. And following the metaphoric and paradoxical after-light,
the Rejected, after all, are the Chosen." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/255/flashcards/1415255/png/screen_shot_2013-01-16_at_82812_pm1358396922101.png

II -
www.legrandtour.fr/fr/module/99999672/193/le-salon-des-refuss

...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.