S h r u t i M a d r i g a l

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 36:49] 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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"Madrigal. There are three hypotheses for its etymology: matricale, maternal popular singing; materialis, profane poetic component and matricalis, liturgical polyphonic chant.

Otacílio Melgaço found mellifluent inspiration in poetical Hindu lullabies and inseminates on them, in spite of the subtle texture consisting of two simultaneous lines of independent melody, an ´aura´ of plainchant! All etymological possibilities properly embraced. We´re facing a stupendous, enigmatic and enlightened work!

Musically, he perverts some of the typical characteristics of this compositional genre, contributing to innovative milestones demarcation. Extrapolations that contemporary prism allows. Examples: inserting instruments (probably because Mr. Melgaço always used voices as essentially sound sources and not necessarily vernacular vehicles; everything becomes polyphonically kinesthetic); by own Piece architecture in its subdivisions (with interventions coming from the harpsichord, organ and celesta addition of strings and percussive minutiae) never before proposed in such a way etc.

The Madrigal usually explores heroic subjects, pastoral, and even libertines. O.M. expands this perspective and transubstantiates it at an amplitude uterine (It´s not random to note that the image within the peacock feather - which is on the cover of the album - looks like a fetus) and mystique (a clearly liturgical sonority while backbone).

[Highlighting the voices (recorded in overdubbing) made by T. A. Rajam, one of Nausícaaa Ensemble tete-a-tete members.]

To paraphrase the English writer Colin Dexter, since ´The Way Through The Woods´ > ´Nothing quite like it in the whole history of music,´ announced Morse magisterially, after Brünnhilde had ridden into the flames and the waves of the Rhine had finally rippled into silence. ´You think so?´ ´Don't you?´ ´I prefer Elizabethan madrigals, really.´ And Melgacian too. In this case, nothing de facto quite like it in the whole history of music." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"S h r u t i: ´that which is heard´. Both by incommensurability of the expression as the Hindu theoretic, this Melgacian sonic creation confirms the weighting of Virginia Woolf, ´Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.´ ´Shruti Madrigal´ is a numinous halo, a higher consciousness that makes us envision everything is still audible after the - teleological - end. If there`s an end. I suppose not, henceforward I believe there will be always a semi-transparent apotheotic madrigal waiting for us, vivified listeners!" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Shruti (Sanskrit: श्रुति, IAST: śrūti) literally means "that which is heard", and refers to the body of most authoritative, ancient sacred texts comprising the central canon of Hinduism. It includes the four Vedas including its four types of embedded texts - the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the early Upanishads.

Shrutis have been considered revealed knowledge, variously described as of divine origin, or nonhuman primordial origins. In Hindu tradition, they have been referred to as Apaurusṣeya (authorless). All six orthodox schools of Hinduism accept the authority of Shruti, but many scholars in these schools denied that Shrutis are divine, work of God. Heterodox schools of Hinduism, such as the 1st millennium BCE Cārvākas, did not accept the authority of the Shrutis and considered them to be the flawed work of man.

Shruti, or "what is heard", differs from other sources of Hindu Philosophy, particularly smriti or text “which is remembered”. These sacred works span much of the history of Hinduism, beginning with the earliest known Hindu Vedic literature and ending in the early historical period with the later Upanishads. Of the Srutis, the Upanishads alone are widely known, and the central ideas of the Upanishadic Sruti are at the spiritual core of Hindus;

II - A Madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. It is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name.

Madrigals originated in Italy during the 1520s. Unlike many strophic forms of the time, most madrigals were through-composed. In the madrigal, the composer attempted to express the emotion contained in each line, and sometimes individual words, of a celebrated poem.

The madrigal originated in part from the frottola, in part from the resurgence in interest in vernacular Italian poetry, and also from the influence of the French chanson and polyphonic style of the motet as written by the Franco-Flemish composers who had naturalized in Italy during the period. A frottola generally would consist of music set to stanzas of text, while madrigals were through-composed. However, some of the same poems were used for both frottola and madrigals. The poetry of Petrarch in particular shows up in a wide variety of genres.

In Italy, the madrigal was the most important secular form of music of its time. The madrigal reached its formal and historical zenith by the second half of the 16th century. English and German composers, too, took up the madrigal in its heyday. After the 1630s, the madrigal began to merge with the cantata and the dialogue. With the rise of opera in the early 17th century, the aria gradually displaced the madrigal.

...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.