S o n a t a "S e m p i t e r n a"

- P a r a C o r d a s & P e r c u s s ã o -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 43:59] 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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"´In the Modern period, sonata form became detached from its traditional harmonic basis. The works of Schoenberg, Debussy, Sibelius and Richard Strauss emphasized different scales other than the traditional major-minor scale and used chords that did not clearly establish tonality. It could be argued that by the 1930s, sonata form was merely a rhetorical term for any movement that stated themes, took them apart, and put them back together again. However, even composers of atonal music, such as Roger Sessions and Karl Hartmann, continued to use outlines that clearly pointed back to the practice of Beethoven and Haydn, even if the method and style were quite different. At the same time, composers such as Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich revived the idea of a sonata form by more complex and extended use of tonality. In more recent times, Minimalism has searched for new ways to develop form, and new outlines which, again, while not being based on the same harmonic plan as the Classical sonata, are clearly related to it. An example is Aaron Jay Kernis's Symphony in Waves from the early 1990s.´

Another example is Otacílio Melgaço's Sonata ´Sempiterna´ from the new millennium.

There minimalist spectra in this work however the level of inventiveness goes beyond. O.M. keeps the whole structure of its Sonata: undulating. Tonalities (and atonality); organismic characteristics of each movement and rhetorical terms; themes; dynamic; not blind obedience to sequential properties as allegro, slow, dance or faster time etc. In fact, if today the concept of ´Sonata´ is vague, this is what determines the Brazilian composer and instrumentalist: he takes the vagueness to the ultimate consequences.

Nevertheless, behind the tearing layers of strings, you can hear how there are suggestions that subtly allude to certain canons. There is a sonatistic skeleton in the wake of the Melgacian advances and it is masterful. As the Sempiternity is the motto of this creation, Otacílio reconciles past and future in an armistice which enshrines the present.

The strategic use of percussion is a marvel. There is a distinct element to its four parts. At first, the Gong; in the second there are Bells; Timpani in the third and in the fourth the Glockenspiel. Linking this rhythmic jewelery with continuous string ripples, Melgaço generates an atmosphere that really goes beyond notions of time and space. By the way, this is part of his stylistic.

Apropos, in stupendous Z.Q. performance (with overlays and more overlaps matured by Melgaço), the splendid strings - impressive, penetrating, stunning and piercing - seem sometimes human voices! So I feel comfortable when I use the word ´Alchemy´ when I describe the successive epiphanies perpetrated by O.M. So I understand the concept of perpetuity, constant transcendence that keeps the immanence. We all know the saying of Heraclitus: ´No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.´ Wise metaphor that serves as a shelter to the perennial. The entire work of Otacílio Melgaço is proof of that and this ´Sempiterna´ serves us ´just as´ impeccable example. These are Pieces that sound renewed when heard again and its effect on us is indelible: make us people always reborn. In our feelings, emotions, intuitions, intellect, minds and, why not?, souls. Our souls are a hidden orchestra; we know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura we sound and clash inside ourself. All we hear is the symphony ... confides to us Fernando Pessoa. Is the symphony or the sonata because this experience of Sempiternity right here and now is the function of life!

´Elle est retrouvée!
Quoi? - l'Éternité.
C'est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.´

Such Rimbaudian enlightenment could be a perfect epigraph for the ´Sonata´. Quoi? - l´Sempiternel!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"In his ´Auguries of Innocence´, William Blake brings up:

´To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.´

I will try to describe in a few words, all that is unspeakable, untranslatable, unpronounceable:
If ´the metaphysics of Eternity studies that which necessarily exists outside or independently of space and time´;
the metaphysics of Sempiternity should study Melgacian compositions like this otherworldly ´Sonata´." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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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, being vague, evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until the Classical era, when it took on increasing importance, and by the early 19th century came to represent a principle of composing large scale works. It was applied to most instrumental genres and regarded—alongside the fugue—as one of two fundamental methods of organizing, interpreting and analyzing concert music. Though the musical style of sonatas has changed since the Classical era, most 20th- and 21st-century sonatas still maintain the same structure;

II - "Sempiterna", in Portuguese, means Gifted with Sempiternity

Eternity is endless time. In philosophy and mathematics, an infinite duration is also called sempiternity, or everlasting. Eternity is an important concept in many religions, where the immortality of God or the gods is said to endure eternally. Some, such as Aristotle, would say the same about the natural cosmos in regard to both past and future eternal duration, and like the eternal Platonic Forms, immutability was considered essential.

...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.