T I N T I N N A B U L A. C. T. I. O. N.

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration ​01:02​​​​​​​​​:​​​43​​] 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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"The ringing of bells.

Tintinnabuli (singular: tintinnabulum; from the Latin,´a bell´) is a compositional style created by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, introduced in his Für Alina (1976), and used again in Spiegel im Spiegel (1978). This simple template was influenced by the composer's mystical experiences with chant music. Pärt's tintinnabular scheme is characterized by two types of voice, the first of which (dubbed the ´tintinnabular voice´) arpeggiates the tonic triad, and the second of which moves diatonically in stepwise motion. The works often have a slow and meditative tempo, and a minimalist approach to both notation and performance.

Pärt's own comments on his method:

´Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers – in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning. The complex and many-faceted only confuses me, and I must search for unity. What is it, this one thing, and how do I find my way to it? Traces of this perfect thing appear in many guises – and everything that is unimportant falls away. Tintinnabulation is like this. The three notes of a triad are like bells. And that is why I call it tintinnabulation.´

´I could compare my music to white light which contains all colours. Only a prism can divide the colours and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener.´

´Tintinnabuli is the mathematically exact connection from one line to another. Tintinnabuli is the rule where the melody and the accompaniment [accompanying voice] ... is one. One and one, it is one – it is not two. This is the secret of this technique.´

In Melgacian T I N T I N N A B U L A. C. T. I. O. N., no doubt Otacílio pays homage to Arvo. Both the use of such a compositional artifice and the title of the work explicitly imply this. First of all, here's an introductory and inescapable postulation: an illustrious Brazilian conductor and arranger, Júlio Medaglia (a former student of Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Barbirolli; founder of the Amazonas Philharmonic and having already directed the Baden-Baden Radio Orchestra and Rádio Roquete Pinto) once criticized the tendency of many more ´daring´ (or potentially propellants) composers of the 20th century to surrender to a reactionary religiosity that ended up curbing their sonic advances by adopting more innocuous syntaxes, in full accordance with a comfort zone of shallow creativity or vacuous propositions.

Melgaço often commented on how much the Lithuanian Pärt became hostage to such a gear. Perhaps it was the price he paid for being the creator of a ´dialect´ and, one way or another, finding himself trapped in this circuit, halo. William Blake, in ´To God´, wrote 'If you have formed a Circle to go into / Go into it yourself & see how you would do'. That's the (Shakespearean) question! We know that the relationship between religion & art (as well as belief and dogmas, behavioral primers...) is - most of the time and by direct or/and surreptitious conduits - castrating or at least imposing in terms of doctrines, tenets, molds, frames. A supposedly more ´pacified´ state of mind, which is related to deities per se (´ruling´ people's lives) or under the mantle (or claws) of ecclesiastical institutions, not necessarily, but can represent a straitjacket if we reflect on going beyond the ´stipulated perimeter´ (perpetrated by this context with the desire or acquiescence of the artist himself).

Whether due to this conjuncture, whether concurrently due to premises of a philosophical and existential nature, the effects of this on the engenders of even a talented musician are quite noticeable. And it seems to me inevitable to point out the sterilizing side of it. Even so, we respect that, it's important to make that clear. It is unquestionable how countless Opuses have been given birth throughout History, with liturgical / canonical inspiration, and which are among the most beautiful, touching, profound or monumental expressions of Humanity. But that's not what we're talking right about now. The specific point of the admonition being made here is how hysterectomizing such a ´consortium´ can be (despite its beauty, commotion, depth or monumentality) for more progressive, visionary perspectives in artistic terms. Closing your eyes (and especially your ears) to this would be a naive, alienated or hypocritical act, to say the least. This is definitely not done by Otacílio Melgaço.

There is another face of Arvo Pärt that, yes, deserves recognition [O.M. honors this] and that is present in his sound offspring, welcome (antidote?) to a perturbed world subject to globalizing pandemoniums like the current one. If we can find in those compositions a form of rebalancing immersion, why not, from time to time, dive into such calm waters? If the originator of Tintinnabuli exorcises any ´exterminating angel´ from himself and transforms himself (pretensily or spontaneously) into a kind of ´living saint´ [this reminds me of John Coltrane who, a short time before he passed away, answered the question: ´What do you intend to do in the next few years?´ ... ´I intend to become a saint!´], who are we to contradict him? What really matters is what each musical note and every pause convey to us there, through its aura and might of (beneficial) affection. On the rest, one by one will conquer a biography, or build a myth, legend or... In view of this, the capacity for intelligibility and discernment is in our hands.

Through the uncountable hands of Melgaço we arrive at
T I N T I N N A B U L A. C. T. I. O. N.
and as he emphasizes such suffix ´action´, it already sounds to me, Ladies and Gentlemen, like a decisive reply to everything I conjectured above. I draw attention to two striking aspects: O.M. uses Arvo's compositional technique here but makes it more ethereal, subtile, vaporous. Otacílio spaces the melodic division, making us have to sharpen our perceptions to be able to follow such a skein thread. Practically, he takes it to the limit and, thought-provoking, extrapolates it. Another Melgacian innovation (rarely done with this terrific mastery) was to link Tintinnabuli and an entire Oriental acclimatization. The complex intertwining ultra kinetics harmony - in the background - is worthy of our regard. We are launched towards a specifically Nipponese atmosphere, which often through, for instance, the percussions, generates a challenging contrast (but, paradoxically, so interpenetrated) between the elements that constitute the always witching Work of the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist.

AUDI, VIDE, TACE." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´Silence is the pause in me when I am near to God´,
words of misteris Pärt.

In the manner of Mr. Melgaço, T I N T I N N A B U L A. C. T. I. O. N. is, in its resonant campanile / belfry / steeple, one of his most silent sonic Epiphanies." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Pärt's compositional approach has expanded somewhat in the years since 1970, but the overall effect remains largely the same. An early example can be heard in Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten;

II - Arvo Pärt (born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical and religious music. Since the late 1970s, Pärt has worked in a minimalist style that employs tintinnabuli. Pärt's music is in part inspired by Gregorian chant. His most performed works include Fratres (1977), Spiegel im Spiegel (1978), and Für Alina (1976). From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world, and the second most performed in 2019. The Arvo Pärt Centre, in Laulasmaa, was opened to the public in 2018.

...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.