T a n z t K a r l T a n z t!

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
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Z y c l u z Q u a r t e t t

[duration 01:05:59] all rights reserved

Dedicated to Karl Kraus

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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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"Karl Kraus is an eternal loose cannon! His level of irony, sarcasm ... was flawless and extremely attractive. Obviously, a born polemicist.
T a n z t K a r l T a n z t! is an audacious phonograph record and entirely devoted to string quartets. Let us note in passing:
M e l g a c i a n String Quartets!
Everything has the same importance: the creation itself, arrangement, interpretation and literally ´alchemy´ achieved by O.M. in the mixing process. A snake biting its own tail because the mixtures are also overwhelmingly compositional paths.
The Brazilian composer and instrumentalist enforces the same profile of his honoree and the mischief contained in the titles of sound pieces is indelible proof. Not only makes mention of the legacies of Kraus himself but musical movements and doctrines and schools and thoughts striking and determinants to the twentieth century. More than ´Witze´, the titles are manifestations of a fine critic. And sonically are experiments that justify Melgaço be on the cusp of History. Pointing out several directions forward.
Lastly, the delicious and metaphorical question remains: how Herr Kraus would dance (´tanzt´)? According to Karl, ´Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.´ Then, in correct measure, this work remains beyond censorship and beyond understanding. But there is something to be urgently understood in contemporaneity: We would believe only in an Artist that knew how to dance. Since the choreography is Nietzschean or Krausian or, in the case of the twenty-first century, Melgacian." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"In one way or another, O.M. puts ´his finger in the air´ for - among many, many others; also totems of the same strain or armies of disciples and epigones - Schoenberg, Boulez, Cage... Not looking very offensive the image that I proposed, I meant the finger-wagging in front of their noses. Symbolizing an affirmative genuine authentic emancipatory personalistic Act despite widely ironic. I could cite examples in the lives of those artists (Arnold, Pierre, John and...) who surely would have the same content, ladies and gentlemen. Otacílio does it in his own time as well as the others did in the past. Melgaço makes a retrospect, a particular anamnesis of the last century and turn the page without hesitation. Melgaço performs a kind of reckoning and moves on... Reckoning not with the names themselves but part of what they represented. Or better yet, which was often misunderstood by herds, flocks of followers - from mentors uttered. His intention (O.M.) is not destructive because it has been done over the second half of the twentieth century. What is the intention then? Exquisite humor that´s present in this work is only the more inviting face than is sonically and seriously revealed.
Sound pieces sometimes extremely challenging; sometimes sarcastically punctual about his - melgacian - ´targets´; sometimes bringing out an attractive excitability! Choose Karl Kraus as ´Eiserne Front´ plus irreproachable is really a punch in the stomach of (often) vacuous, liquid contemporaneity.
While Melgaço throws ´acid frolics´(?) to great music icons of the past century through his puns, instead of simply quoting or caricaturing colossal figures (just like, in their times, they used to do - in warlike posture facing other personalities sporting the same caliber/carat and with which fed disagreements and rivalries), O.M. is propositional. As if he could conduct the shattering of the references to institute new (individual) starting points. Shattering as a defrosting, thaw. Until it is brought to light what was underneath those translucent layers... ´Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.´ (K.K.)
Ultimately, what is brought to the fore are Purposes of Existence, I think. This is the Rite of Passage (Весна священная?) that Otacílio proposes. T a n z t K a r l T a n z t! and the seven hallucinatory string quartets make a frantic scan of the normative legacy of sound vertices pointing to the new millennium. The current. Melgaço deconstructs vertex by vertex and then, instead of turning into a new one, he prefers to propose to all of us: ´let's dance!´ (...) ´Inevitable dance; the dance of swords of all times!´, citing excerpt from a poem by João Guimarães Rosa. And assuming a paraphrase: ...and so we will be dragged ´to the center of the whirlwind of great strength, which now flows, fierce, inside and outside of us...´ Here's the proposal, invitation, challenge that Melgaço launches us and that he superbly translated into unparalleled strings." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I - Karl Kraus (1874 – 1936) was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He directed his satire to the press, German culture, and German and Austrian politics.

II - "Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis." (K.K.)

III - "The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test." (K.K.)

...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.