S e r e n ì s i m a V e n e x i a
C a p r i c c i o P e r L a D o m i n a n t e

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:08:41] 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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"´Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,´ Polo said. ´Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.´ (Ítalo Calvino)

Speak no more. Now let's listen, let's hear a city being musically, capriciously played. Never to be lost. Nowadays, Capriccio is applied to works filled with amazing effects and original methods. It's exactly what you'll find in ´Serenìsima Venexia´ (title in Venetian dialect).

A Piece filled with amazing effects and original methods. It's exactly what you'll find in ´Serenìsima Venexia´ (title in Venetian dialect). By the way, ´amazing effects and original methods´ you will find throughout the creation of Mr. Melgaço.

Over and over again, he plays with great wisdom the ability to give wings to our imagination. His wealth of intricate sound overlaps, the tendency to embark on an odyssey without beginning and without end...are challenging invitations. Invitations to penetrate a mythological city like La Dominante (may be also an ingenious pun if you think 'dominant' is a musical term); invitations with the power to fascinate us by the intricacies that translate sonically La Serenissima - the city that belongs to the imagination of the composer and, from that, belongs more to us. In ´venexian´context, give wings or fins and gills to the imagination. The Sound Architecture that Otacílio bore is an amazing Portrait of his revered Vinegia because is endowed with spatial concretion and simultaneously throws in a nearly delusional abstractionism! Reminds me of Calvino's Invisible Cities. However...with the typical character of the mysterious polysemy that music has. (Carefully, some terms to take their veils ...) Tones, microtones ... O.M. uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave. Micro-levels - the Melgacian timbristic eccentricity is overwhelming! His rhythmicity is phantasmal, i.e. involves and also calls us to many other fields of movement intensities ...

Despite never exhausting the possibilities - my words were already enough, dear readers. Now it's time to surrender to the irreplaceable hearing. Capriciously ..." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Why Venice?

I can assume several links between this city and Melgaço.
The art, the mysteries, legends, the carnival (and incomparable enigmatic masks), La Fenice, monumentality, architecture, luxury, taste, style, design ...
In Music, would highlight Nono, Maderna, Vivaldi, Albinoni, Monteverdi ... Moreover, if I take into account Melgaço profile, there were interesting historical characters like Casanova, Marco Polo ... All of them without focusing on numerous painters, writers, playwrights ... A list of names would be endless.
Creative fascination that the city signaled for Shakespeare, Mann and Pound - citing only three references - are valuable tips ...

´The name (Venice) is connected with the people known as the Veneti, perhaps the same as the Eneti (Ενετοί). The meaning of the word is uncertain. Connections with the Latin verb venire (to come) or venia are fanciful. A connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning 'sea-blue', is possible.´ To come. Sea-blue ... Here are other clues.

´The Venetian state - the medieval Maritime Republic of Venice - was often popularly called the ´Republic of Music´, and an anonymous Frenchman of the 17th century is said to have remarked that ´In every home, someone is playing a musical instrument or singing. There is music everywhere.´ This sonic ´Deluge´ also seems worthy of our attention to try to decipher the melgacian Capriccio. But will be through three poems - written by Alexander Alexandrovich Blok - that I´ll try to summarize the magic and matrimonial ties between Otacílio and his honoree Queen of the Adriatic (Floating City of Water, Masks, Bridges and Canals):

V e n e z i a

´Con lei me ne andavo nel mare,
con lei abbandonavo la sponda,
con lei me ne stavo lontano,
dimenticando i miei cari...
La rossa vela
nella verde lontananza!
La nera conteria
sul cupo scialle!

Torna dalla messa tenebrosa,
nel cuore non ha più sangue...
Cristo ormai stanco di portare la croce...

L'adriatico amore-
mio ultimo amore-
perdona, perdona!

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Un vento gelido dalla laguna.
Silenziosi feretri di gondole.
Stanotte io sono steso -infermo e giovane-
accanto alla colonna del leone.

Con un canto di ghisa, sulla torre,
battono i giganti mezzanotte.
Nella laguna della luna annega
San Marco la sua adorna iconostàsi.

Nell'ombra della galleria ducale,
appena rischiarata dalla luna,
furtivamente passa Salomè,
recando la mia testa insanguinata.

Dorme la gente, i palazzi, i canali,
solo il passo slittante del fantasma,
solo la testa su quel piatto nero
guarda mesta la tenebra dintorno.

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Si attenua l'ostinato fragore della vita.
Si ritrae la marea delle inquietudini.
Ed un vento tra il velluto nero
canta della futura mia esistenza.

Forse mi desterò in un'altra patria,
magari in questa terra tenebrosa?
E a volte mi accadrà di sospirare
con la memoria questa vita in sogno?

Chi sarà a darmi la vita? Il nipote di un doge,
un mercante, un pescatore, o un prete
dividerà il suo letto nelle tenebre
future con la mia futura madre?

Forse affascinando il proprio udito
col soave canto di una veneziana,
il mio futuro padre fra gli accenti
di quel motivo già mi presagisce?

E non forse nel secolo venturo
a me bambino ordinerà la sorte
di schiudere le palpebre tremanti
accanto alla colonna del leone?

Madre, che cantano le àfone corde?
Forse tu stai già fantasticando
di proteggermi con un sacro scialle
dal vento e dalla laguna?

No! Ciò che esiste, che è esistito- è vivo!
Visioni, fantasie, pensieri - indietro!
L'onda dell'alta marea che ritorna
li scaglia nella notte di velluto!´

What exists, what existed - is alive!
Visions, fantasies, thoughts - back!
The vibrational waves of capricious high tide returns
throws US into the velvet Melgacian audible Light!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - A Capriccio or caprice (sometimes plural: caprices, capri or, in Italian, capricci), is a piece of music, usually fairly free in form and of a lively character. The typical capriccio is one that is fast, intense, and often virtuosic in nature.
The term has been applied in disparate ways, covering works using many different procedures and forms, as well as a wide variety of voices or instrumental forces. The earliest occurrence of the term was in 1561 by Jacquet de Berchem and applied to a set of madrigals. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, it could refer to madrigals, music intended alternatively for voices or instruments, or for strictly instrumental pieces, especially keyboard compositions (Schwandt 2001).

II - Dialetto veneziano...

«[...] qual Sità ùnego albergo ai giorni nostri de łibertà, de gustisia, de paxe, unego rifugio dei boni e soło porto al qual, sbatue per ogni indove da ła tiranìa e da ła guera, łe pol riparar a sałute łe nave dei ómeni chei serca de far na vita tranquiła: Sità rica d'oro ma più de nominansa, poténte de fòrse ma più de virtù, sora saldi màrmari fondà ma sora più sòłide bàxe de siviłe concordia ferma e imoviłe e, megio che dal mar dal qual ła xé sinta, da ła prudente sapiensa dè fii soi diféxa e fata segura» (Francesco Petrarca)

Coordinae
45°26′23″N 12°19′55″E

Venesia ła gera ła Capital de ła Serenisima Republica. Deso ła xe el Capoluogo del Vèneto, dopo l'anesion a l'Italia del 1866. Ła ga pi de 270 000 àneme, 70 000 'nte łe ixołe e 200 000 su ła tera ferma. Na volta ła gera ciamà Venexia (co ła s tènara de xe): par 'sto motivo qua deso tanti i scrive ancor Venexia anca se ormai i leze senpre "Venesia" co s curta e dura.

III - Venice is a city in northeastern Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches along the shoreline, between the mouths of the Po and the Piave Rivers. Venice is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks.

The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC. The city historically was the capital of the Republic of Venice. Venice has been known as the "La Dominante", "Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", and "City of Canals". Luigi Barzini described it in The New York Times as "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man". Venice has also been described by the Times Online as being one of Europe's most romantic cities.

The Republic of Venice was a major maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as a very important center of commerce (especially silk, grain, and spice) and art in the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century. This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history. It is also known for its several important artistic movements, especially the Renaissance period. Venice has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and it is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi.

...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.