S t r u l d b r u g s

- P a s t o r a l e -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 37:28] all rights reserved

#

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)

+

"In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, the name struldbrug is given to those humans in the nation of Luggnagg who are born seemingly normal, but are in fact immortal. However, although struldbrugs do not die, they do nonetheless continue aging. Swift's work depicts the evil of immortality without eternal youth.

They are easily recognized by a red dot above their left eyebrow. They are normal human beings until they reach the age of thirty, at which time they become dejected. Upon reaching the age of eighty they become legally dead, and suffer from many ailments including the loss of eyesight and the loss of hair.

Struldbrugs were forbidden to own property:

As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers (metes) and bounds.

Because:

Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.

These are the impressive characters that Mr. Melgaço archetypally carries to its rich sound universe.

An artist - perhaps because his narcissism, vanity, pretension - flirts with immortality but, if really a significant Artist, he flirts through his own Art. From its invaluable and relevance. No fads or pyrotechnics or market quotations or imposed trends or give and take. Oscar Wilde once said 'Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.' I refer to the Artist and its value. Artist who flirts with immortality. And that devours her with his eyes. And goes further. Just as a legacy to Humanity.

The focus on another scenario, prolonged life to the fullest (especially with advances in medicine and technology) is one of the recurring themes nowadays universally. In this ordinary context, one of the issues Otacílio, who is certainly an Artist - with capital A - and therefore makes an eclipse between the two prisms, ... one of the issues Otacílio brings us is: immortality but fundamentally why? And at what price?

Let us hear what O.M. and 'his' Struldbrugs have to teach us about.

And timelessly to challenge us. And exotically to delight us." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"Pastorale is a vocal or instrumental Piece.

It has bucolic character.

Would report to the shepherds of Antiquity.

It's usually written in 6/8 or 12/8.

Therefore refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood.

Otacílio Melgaço provides his own decoding and every historical norms - he presents a peculiar, idiosyncratic composure. Either through the compositional, interpretive, and technological perspective.

Beethoven's Pastoral is 'no musical cul-de-sac', writes Tom Service (for 'The Guardian'). It's 'a radical work, and in its final movement is music more purely spine-tingling and life-enhancingly joyful than almost anywhere else in his output.'
The composer born in the kingdom of Prussia insisted that these works - its all five movements - should not be construed as a 'sound picture', but as an expression of feelings.

Communing with some of these predicates (decanted by Mr. Service), with some not - deliberately more 'purely spine-tingling' than 'life-enhancingly joyful', 'Struldbrugs' (Pastorale) - fully in line with what Beethoven wanted - is exactly that, a presageful perplexing expression of polyphonic stupendous feelings." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

&

I - In Baroque music, a Pastorale is a movement of a melody in thirds over a drone bass, recalling the Christmas music of pifferari, players of the traditional Italian bagpipe (zampogna) and reed pipe (piffero). Pastorales are generally in 6/8 or 9/8 or 12/8 metre, at a moderate tempo. They resemble a slowed-down version of a tarantella, encompassing many of the same rhythms and melodic phrases.

Common examples include the last movement of Corelli's Christmas Concerto (Op.6, No.8), the third movement of Vivaldi's Spring concerto from The Four Seasons, the Pifa movement of Handel's Messiah, the first movements of Bach's Pastorale (BWV 590) for organ, and the Sinfonia that opens part II of his Christmas Oratorio as an introduction to the angelic announcement to the shepherds. Scarlatti wrote some examples in his keyboard sonatas, and many other composers in the transition between the baroque and classical eras, particularly French, used this technique. Rossini famously included a Pastorale section in his William Tell Overture. The Italian pastorale Tu scendi dalle stelle, sometimes called "Carol of the Bagpipers" (Canzone d'i zampognari), is a widely popular Christmas carol by St. Alfonso Liguori, and Pietro Yon's Gesù bambino is another;

II - Chinese Taoism placed the Island of the Immortals eastward from China, while Swift places the struldbrugs near Japan.

The term struldbrug has been used in science fiction, most prolifically by Larry Niven and Robert Silverberg, to describe supercentenarians;

III - www.kellscraft.com/GulliversTravels/Gulliver065.jpg

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

\|/

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.