S o n a t a "S e l e n i t a"

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 03:07:15] 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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"From the Greek ´Selēnē´ (Moon), ´Selenita´ (in Portuguese). In English, ´Selenite´, or the most common term, ´Lunarian´. In science fiction, an imagined inhabitant of the moon. Also ´moony, dreamy, dreamlike, abstracted´.

´Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. And music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into another, but why this happens I don't know.´ (Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata)

Yes, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy: ´Selenita´ graced us with the privilege of knowing a little more." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"What interests here for Otacílio Melgaço: a still not very defined perspective of what a sonata is. Its primordia. When it was a vague concept. It´s through this indeterminism that he penetrates. If we think of the Baroque period, deserve to be mentioned: such freer form (or, historically, the fact that it isn't yet being subjugated to a tacit mold).

[Non-form is particularly a motif of constant attention and unveiling of Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist. Are probably intuitions and artistic explorations of Eastern philosophy by Melgaço, I believe. What´s worth to Emptiness; to Action through Inaction; to the notion of ´which form has ... what has no form.´]

Observing the Baroquian time, the term sonata is also applied to the series of over five hundred works for harpsichord solo, or sometimes for other keyboard instruments, by Domenico Scarlatti, originally published under the name Essercizi per il gravicembalo (Exercises for the Harpsichord). Most of these pieces are in one binary-form movement only, with two parts that are in the same tempo and use the same thematic material, though occasionally there will be changes in tempo within the sections. Both the solo and trio sonatas of Vivaldi show parallels with the concerti he was writing at the same time. He composed over seventy sonatas, the great majority of which are of the solo type. The sonatas of Domenico Paradies are mild and elongated works. Et cætera.

In this way, we see that it isn't so strange to notice two
(ultra-elongated) movements created by Melgaço, not, as it later became conventional, three or four. The both sides of the moon? Other two characteristics of the hypnotic present work that have important situability are 1- A certain sense of ´continuo´ (if we understand, in this case, as a permanent line of the sound Corpus as to - invoking a known formula but now lato sensu - ´exposition, development, and recapitulation´; Ariadne's thread that determines precisely a structure in progressive convolution (even approaching, if I think of compositional syntax, the said post-structuralism). I would say, a continuity, perpetuality above ´normative´ perceptions of
time´n´space) and 2- How one turns to a solo instrument (recorded and overdubbed with and without effects. A very intriguing Melgacian prism: a single instrument, however multiplied, metamorphosed and intercommunicating; one and several at the same time).

Developing slightly more something I just mentioned. Post-structuralism is defined by its relationship to its predecessor, structuralism, an intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid-20th century which argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure—modeled on language (i.e., structural linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas—a ´third order´ that mediates between the two. Post-structuralist authors all present different critiques of structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures. A post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object (e.g., a text - and I adding now, a sonic textuality -), it´s necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object. Seems to me a valid starting point for those who, parallel to hearing, want to delve deeper into the ´Selenita´.

´Selenita´ could be denominated as ´Sonata for mirrored Strings & acupuncturist Percussion´. Timpano + Gong are used as a watershed, an intervention emblematic and, therefore, sporadic. Of striking precision and strategy. Aside from this, regarding the Daedalian content of more than three hours in duration; although it seems to me timbristically close to sonorous vehicles that have the (alluded) strings pinched (something diachronicly well representative in term of sonatas): to demonstrate the breadth of the possibilities pointed out by O.M., I have the impression that it flirts with ambiences/atmospheres very well prospected by a dream pop (by that word - ´dream´ - we´ll reverberate ´selenite´) / ethereal wave / post-punk / gothic rock / dark wave / alternative group that Otacílio especially esteems: the (Scots of) Cocteau Twins.

A d d e n d u m

i - ´By reflecting a little on this subject I am almost convinced that those numberless small Circuses we see on the moon are the works of the Lunarians and may be called their Towns.´ (William Herschel)

If the subject is the focused here, I'll agree with the famous astronomer;

ii - ´Coelorum perrupit claustra.

He broke through the barriers of the skies.´ [Herschel's epitaph]

I constellate all the convictions that such ´He´, post-The Selenita Sonata, might also be referring, Ladies and Gentlemen, to Mr. Melgaço." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - Sonata (from Latin and Italian: sonare, "to sound"), in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata (Latin and Italian cantare, "to sing"), a piece sung. The term evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until the Classical era, when it took on increasing importance, and is vague. By the early 19th century, it came to represent a principle of composing large-scale works. Though the musical style of sonatas has changed since the Classical era, most 20th- and 21st-century sonatas still maintain the same structure;

II - Heinrich Schenker argued that there was an Urlinie or basic tonal melody, and a basic bass figuration. He held that when these two were present, there was basic structure, and that the sonata represented this basic structure in a whole work with a process known as interruption (Schenker 1979, 1:134).

As a practical matter, Schenker applied his ideas to the editing of the piano sonatas of Beethoven, using original manuscripts and his own theories to "correct" the available sources. The basic procedure was the use of tonal theory to infer meaning from available sources as part of the critical process, even to the extent of completing works left unfinished by their composers. While many of these changes were and are controversial, that procedure has a central role today in music theory, and is an essential part of the theory of sonata structure as taught in most music schools;

III - The etymology of selenite is through Middle English selinete, from Latin selenites, from Greek selēnitēs (lithos), literally, moonstone or stone of the moon, from selēnē (Moon). The ancients had a belief that certain transparent crystals waxed and waned with the moon. From the 15th century, "selenite" has referred specifically to the variety of gypsum that occurs in transparent crystals or crystalline masses.

[>> "We add the direct relationship between ´Selenita´ (in Portuguese) and ´Selenite´ (as Lunarian) since ´Selēnē´ reports to the Moon (as we already know) and 'i t e', in English, refers, among other cases, to a suffix of nouns denoting especially persons associated with a place, tribe. Example: a native or citizen of Moscow: Muscovite." << O.M.Team];

IV - Frederick William Herschel (1738 – 1822) was a British astronomer and composer of German origin, and brother of fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel, with whom he worked. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, Herschel followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, before migrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen.

Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that the nebulae in the Messier catalogue were clusters of stars. Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 (2,500 objects) and in 1820 (5,000 objects). In the course of an observation on 13 March 1781, he realized that one celestial body he had observed was not a star, but a planet, Uranus. This was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity and Herschel became famous overnight. As a result of this discovery, George III appointed him Court Astronomer. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and grants were provided for the construction of new telescopes.

Herschel pioneered the use of astronomical spectrophotometry as a diagnostic tool, using prisms and temperature measuring equipment to measure the wavelength distribution of stellar spectra. Other work included an improved determination of the rotation period of Mars, the discovery that the Martian polar caps vary seasonally, the discovery of Titania and Oberon (moons of Uranus) and Enceladus and Mimas (moons of Saturn). In addition, Herschel discovered infrared radiation. Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1816. He was the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society when it was founded in 1820. He died in August 1822, and his work was continued by his only son, John Herschel.

...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.