S a t u r n a l i a
S i x P i e c e s F o r H a r p s i c h o r d
O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
[duration 01:43:45] 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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"´Sic loquendum esse cum hominibus, tanquam dii audiant; sic loquendum cum hominibus, tanquam homines audiant.´
´We should so speak with men as though the Gods were listening, and so speak with the Gods as though men were listening.´
Saturnalia, I., 7, 6.
The only exception: some structural kinematic noises from various sources. Made this caveat, believe me!: all sounds heard in ´Saturnalia´ - scarlet and luxuriant Otacílio Melgaço offspring - come from the same courteous apparatus: a grand-piano-shaped with a roughly triangular case accommodating long bass strings at the left and short treble strings at the right.
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I n t e r l u d e
´Nescis quid vesper vehat.´
´Thou knowest not what evening may bring.´
Macrobius. Saturnalia, L, 7, 12.
´Through the 19th century, the harpsichord was almost completely supplanted by the piano. In the 20th century, composers returned to the instrument, as they sought out variation in the sounds available to them. Under the influence of Arnold Dolmetsch, the harpsichordists Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (1872–1951) and in France, Wanda Landowska (1879–1959), were at the forefront of the instrument's renaissance. Concertos for the instrument were written by Francis Poulenc (the Concert champêtre, 1927–28), Manuel de Falla, Walter Leigh, Bertold Hummel, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki, Michael Nyman, Philip Glass, and Roberto Carnevale. Bohuslav Martinů wrote both a concerto and a sonata for the instrument, and Elliott Carter's Double Concerto is scored for harpsichord, piano and two chamber orchestras. In chamber music, György Ligeti wrote a small number of solo works for the instrument (including Continuum), and Henri Dutilleux's Les Citations (1991) is scored for harpsichord, oboe, double bass and percussions. Elliott Carter's Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord (1952) explores the timbre possibilities of the modern harpsichord. Josef Tal wrote Concerto for harpsichord & electronic music (1964) and Chamber Music (1982) for s-recorder, marimba & harpsichord. Both Dmitri Shostakovich (Hamlet, 1964) and Alfred Schnittke (Symphony No.8, 1994) wrote works that use the harpsichord as part of the orchestral texture. John Cage and Lejaren Hiller wrote HPSCHD (1969) for harpsichord and computer-generated tape. John Zorn has also used harpsichord in works like Rituals (1998), Contes de Fées (1999), and La Machine de l'Etre (2000). In the Preface to his piano collection Mikrokosmos, Béla Bartók suggests some ten pieces as being suitable for the harpsichord. Seán Ó Riada used the harpischord both for the soundtracks of film music, and for interpretations of the Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan during Riada's work with the band Ceoltori Cualann (later to become The Chieftans). Riada used harpsichord for the latter with the justification that the harpsichord best replicated the sound of the metal strings of the early Irish harp. Benjamin Britten included harpsichord parts in his opera A Midsummer Night's Dream and his cantata Phaedra. Harpsichordist Hendrik Bouman has composed pieces in the 17th and 18th century style, including works for solo harpsichord, harpsichord concerti, and other works that call for harpsichord continuo. Other contemporary composers writing new harpsichord music in period styles include Grant Colburn, and Fernando De Luca. Notable performers include Oscar Milani and Mario Raskin. During the last half of the 20th century, the sound of the harpsichord (or perhaps rather more often, its electronically created equivalent) became very familiar in popular culture, appearing frequently in popular music, television, films, computer games, and so on.´
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´Tempus ante mundum esse non potuit.´
´Time could not exist before the world.´
Commentarii, II., 10, 9.
The Melgacian capacity to deal with each timbre is, I usually say,
a-l-c-h-e-m-i-c-a-l and occasionally reaches incredible results! Moreover, the very compositional structure is fascinating, justifying the blatant developability of the Harpsichord from the twentieth century scenarios and now twenty one - the Synchrony which houses Otacílio Melgaço. I would call the attention of the ladies and gentlemen to the Melgacian equalization discussed here. There is no backward-view and also there´s not a very position 'avant-garde' - as unpalatable. O.M. moves through the vertices with freedom, he surpasses them - quite genuinely! The refinement, the sophistication of sonic Pieces reaches a degree, I would utter, mythological. Keylever, plectrum, quill, jackrail, ... , are transformed into particles beyond the concreteness of a witching machinery; in the hands of Melgaço are filigrees that start to feed a perpetual infatuated Moto indeed timeless. Or, reviving the festive Saturnalia, we´re now invited to exhume and regaining a Golden Age. And it becomes timeless, I hope. The palpable glimpses of an acoustic labyrinthine spatiality that leaves us with exciting vertigo (cobweb of Melgaço as sound engineer); harmonies elusive and Brumalian; rhythmicities from some superior limbus; agrarian melodies fragmented and reassembled only through the acuity of our hearing; What else to brilliantly seal?
Ambrosius Theodosius, known simply as Macrobius, probably lived in the early fifth century A.D. He wrote a work on the Roman festival of Saturnalia in the form of dinner table discussions between people at the house of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus. Macrobius describes the origins of the festival: ´It was during their reign that Saturn suddenly disappeared, and Janus then devised means to add to his honors. First he gave the name Saturnia to all the land which acknowledged his rule; and then he built an altar, instituting rites as to a god and calling these rites the Saturnalia-a fact which goes to show how very much older the festival is than the city of Rome. And it was because Saturn had improved the conditions of life that, by order of Janus, religious honors were paid to him, as his effigy indicates, which received the additional attribute of a sickle, the symbol of harvest.´ Like a Sun Unconquerable before eyes finally open, the Melgacian crop is before our ears. Penetrates them. ´Saturnalia - Six Pieces for Harpsichord´ is a art work that resignifies, metamorphoses, proposes a cosmogony. ´Dominus Saturnus,´ God fertilizer. It's not often that we can eat the fruitage of the harvest which has a divine gift as fecundator, agree? More rarely yet is the fact that we can HEAR these same fruits. Come, here are six of them, listen. Accept the maenadic offering of Melgaço, feed yourself with your new Saturnalian ears..." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)
"´Let us live, my Lesbia, let us love,
and all the words of the old, and so moral,
may they be worth less than nothing to us!
Suns may set, and suns may rise again:
but when our brief light has set,
night is one long everlasting sleep.
Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred more,
another thousand, and another hundred,
and, when we’ve counted up the many thousands,
confuse them so as not to know them all,
so that no enemy may cast an evil eye,
by knowing that there were so many kisses.´ (Catullus)
I o, S a t u r n a l i a!
I proclaim the triumph of another stupendous Otacílio Melgaço work; I proclaim the celebration of an unprecedented creation that rises to the heights the aura of an unequivocal instrument, the regal Harpsichord. We are facing a strongly captivating ritual exclamation or even a saturnine invocation in open contemporaneity.
It would be a paradox somehow O.M. refer to the Saturnalia through a musical instrument supposedly detached from a Dionysian context?
First, Melgaço is a paradoxical artist as well as the great are;
Second, the historical tradition of an instrument does not condemn it to be sounded in the eternal same way (and how composers of the twentieth century onwards approached the Harpsichord is indisputable proof of this);
Third, if our attention and imagination are aware, we will meet all the Saturnalian elements in the complexity of Six Pieces: there are passages that suggest subversion of orders, sacrifices, symbolic donations, banquets, the ´princeps´ - his sui generis mask and effusive colors and... We can go further and detect Saturn's expulsion from Olympus; his trip to the Capitol; the foundation of a People; the Golden Age and so on. Certainly tips were left by Otacílio, even if sometimes under modern spectra.
Important is the allegorical revival of Saturnalia in today. I have no doubt that there is a very clear meaning of the part of the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist when he proclaims artistically a highly revolutionary festival in its empiricism and especially principles/precepts. What we, all of us, have to solve (and the musician did his share and continues to do through his Craft) is: How to perpetuate the spirit of Saturnalia beyond the temporal boundaries? Socially, politically, ..., ethically. The perpetuation of the artistic work (and peremptorily I refer to this album phonographic) is an ongoing manifesto, which I hope will serve us as unwavering lesson - for our future day by day. I wish that each of us become a little (more) 'princeps', spreading, as far as possible, shared abundance, constructive equality, fertile fraternity. An inversion of values - values that have expired; an act of iconoclasm. Less moralism and more authenticity. Here is a message embedded in this balsamic sound disc. Probably for this reason too, it´s not ephemerally anacreontic - without losing its orgiastic character - but is a casing for the sake of deep thoughts, mutants reflections.
Without losing its orgiastic tone, I reiterate. In the compositional daring such aspects are present. However even in the most pacified or solemn cadences, there´s a sacrifice by prospects of anti-castrating religiosity while the Melgacian subtle Bacchic interventions are rooted, planted with gallantry in the fertile soil of the Saturnalia uterus.
Another detail of Otacílio (as a designer) is on the cover of the album. If there are six sound creations, are six characters highlighted figuratively. Highlighted in blackish tone: a beautiful sight.
A stretch of Luciano de Samosata translates very clearly and concisely the characteristics of the festival: ´Let no one have public or private activities during the holidays, except in the case of games, entertainment and pleasure. Only the cooks and confectioners can work. That everyone has equal rights, slaves and free, the poor and the rich. Do not allow anyone to boring-, be in a bad mood or make threats. Do not allow audits of accounts. No one is allowed to inspect or registering her clothes during the feast days, or testify, or prepare speeches, nor do public readings, except if they are humorous and graceful, producing mockery and entertainment.´ I'm coming apart again - that long after instructive fun, prevail the backbone of all: ´the foundation of a new People´. We are these people. And through his own pulsating universe, Otacílio Melgaço reminded us that!
Therefore
one two three four five sixfold
and again and always:
I o, S a t u r n a l i a!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)
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I - Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honor of the deity Saturn, held on the 17th of December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to the 23rd of December. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves. The poet Catullus called it "the best of days."
In Roman mythology, Saturn was an agricultural deity who was said to have reigned over the world in the Golden Age, when humans enjoyed the spontaneous bounty of the earth without labor in a state of social egalitarianism. The revelries of Saturnalia were supposed to reflect the conditions of the lost mythical age, not all of them desirable. The Greek equivalent was the Kronia.
Although probably the best-known Roman holiday, Saturnalia as a whole is not described from beginning to end in any single ancient source. Modern understanding of the festival is pieced together from several accounts dealing with various aspects. The Saturnalia was the dramatic setting of the multivolume work of that name by Macrobius, a Latin writer from late antiquity who is the major source for information about the holiday. In one of the interpretations in Macrobius's work, Saturnalia is a festival of light leading to the winter solstice, with the abundant presence of candles symbolizing the quest for knowledge and truth. The renewal of light and the coming of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman Empire at the Dies Natalis of Sol Invictus, the "Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun," on December 25.
The popularity of Saturnalia continued into the third and fourth centuries AD, and as the Roman Empire came under Christian rule, some of its customs have influenced the seasonal celebrations surrounding Christmas and the New Year;
II - Imperial sources refer to a Saturnalicius princeps who ruled as master of ceremonies for the proceedings. He was appointed by lot, and has been compared to the medieval Lord of Misrule at the Feast of Fools. His capricious commands, such as "Sing naked" or "Throw him into cold water," had to be obeyed by the other guests at the convivium: he creates and (mis)rules a chaotic and absurd world. The future emperor Nero is recorded as playing the role in his youth.
Since this figure does not appear in accounts from the Republican period,
the P r i n c e p s
of the Saturnalia may have developed as a satiric response to the new era of rule by a princeps, the title assumed by the first emperor Augustus to avoid the hated connotations of the word "king" (rex). Art and literature under Augustus celebrated his reign as a new Golden Age, but the Saturnalia makes a mockery of a world in which law is determined by one man and the traditional social and political networks are reduced to the power of the emperor over his subjects. In a poem about a lavish Saturnalia under Domitian, Statius makes it clear that the emperor, like Jupiter, still reigns during the temporary return of Saturn;
III - The phrase "Io, Saturnalia!" was the characteristic shout or salutation of the festival, originally commencing after the public banquet on the single day of December 17. The interjection io (Greek ἰώ, ǐō) is pronounced either with two syllables (a short i and a long o) or as a single syllable (with the i becoming the Latin consonantal j and pronounced yō);
IV - A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.
"Harpsichord" designates the whole family of similar plucked keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet.
The harpsichord was widely used in Renaissance and Baroque music. During the late 18th century it gradually disappeared from the musical scene with the rise of the piano. But in the 20th century it made a resurgence, used in historically informed performance of older music, in new (contemporary) compositions, and in popular culture.
...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.
