T r a i n F a n t ô m e

- Celebrating the 130th Anniversary
of Villa-Lobos's Birth -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 12:59] 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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"´Yes, I'm Brazilian and very Brazilian. In my music I let them sing - the rivers and the seas of this great Brazil. I do not put a gag in the tropical exuberance of our forests and our skies, which I instinctively convey to everything I write.´ (Heitor Villa-Lobos)

´Yes, the feeling of Brazilianness for me is a dog without plumes; for me it´s Qadós; for all my being: Grande Sertão that invaginates black holes, wormholes, holies spirits plus multiverses, sacred or devilish verses, which I fuzzily impart to every single thing I spell.´ (Otacílio Melgaço)

The thread of the skein does not lead us to a tangle.

In four stitches:

1 - This year (2017) marks the 130th anniversary of Villa-Lobos's birth;

2 - One of his most emblematic compositions is ´O Trenzinho do Caipira´ (´The Little Train of the Brazilian Countryman´);

3 - One of the most equally emblematic ´avatars´ - in its tradition and mythology - of the state in which Otacílio Melgaço was born (Minas Gerais) is the train;

4 - Mr. Melgaço pays tribute to the great Brazilian (composer, maestro, instrumentalist) that was (self-taught as O.M.) Heitor Villa-Lobos through the same (not musical but) thematic leitmotiv. Simultaneously Otacílio references his own ontology by means of this locomotive icon. And, in an instigating outcome, he takes a step forward before such source of inspiration, bringing it to the territory of contemporary times.

[Two information that serves as a caption to those who still do not know the life and work of one who, by some, is considered to be 1 of the 10 most important musical creators of western history:

i - Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 – 1959) was a Brazilian composer, described as ´the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music´. Villa-Lobos has become the best-known South American composer of all time. A prolific composer, he wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works, totaling over 2000 works by his death in 1959. His music was influenced by both Brazilian folk music and by stylistic elements from the European classical tradition, as exemplified by his Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bachian-pieces);

ii - ´The Little Train of the Brazilian Countryman´ (in Portuguese: ´O Trenzinho do Caipira´ / 1952, 53) is the subtitle for the Toccata movement that concludes an orchestral suite written by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos in 1930, titled Bachianas brasileiras No. 2. The Toccata is approximately 4 to 5 minutes long. The subtitle refers to the local trains in the small communities of the Brazilian interior, the noises of which are imitated in the composition.]

Villa-Lobos used to say: ´Artists live with God – but give their little finger to Satan. I sleep with the angels and dream of the devil.´ He lived this dichotomy, among classical and popular, erudition and folklore, heaven and hell (in the best sense, alias). However, being more exact: he transcended this. Heitor was the junction betwixt these dualities, an eloquent and monumental point of intersection. He could never be imprisoned in a (homogenous, predictable, easy to be sorted or labeled) purist concept, fortunately. And this is an expressive characteristic that O.M. owns too. Ah, ´God and Satan´, ´angels and the devil´, ´sacred or devilish verses´ ... are figures of speech, of course.

´Train Fantôme´. Why Fantôme (´Ghost´)? Why in French?

Un train fantôme est une attraction de type wagon scénique de fête foraine ou de parc d'attractions ayant un thème d'horreur. Ghost train refers to a phantom vehicle. A propos, a small locomotive ride at a funfair, that is designed to frighten by taking you through a dark place full of skeletons and things that jump on the passengers.

a) Ghost likewise means Soul, Spirit, Spectrum, Apparition. Possible ways to evoke and invoke Villa-Lobos;

b) Ghost Train as if Otacílio made mention of times (those lived by Villa-Lobos) that are gone and will never return;

c) Or the opposite, this temporality (quite different from that experienced by Heitor) may be the current, in many ways

(e x i s t e n t i a l - the extreme dilemmas we are exposed to -;
p o l i t i c a l - in its growing anti-humanist, populist, retrograde tendency -; a r t i s t i c - with broad access to information by a larger number of people, what could be a reason for a more culturally accurate demand seems to propagate - of course, there are exceptions that are specialized niches or ghettos - a trivial and shallow and even vulgar scenario - in more generalized terms ... and so forth)

considered as spooky (and we, the passengers or crew);

d) A little more full of picardy (as Villa-Lobos was), Melgaço can offer us this ludic trip by means of a fantastic train (metaphor for a ceremony of initiation) and through it we are provoked by the creator of ´O Trenzinho do Caipira´, projecting himself over us with its more than two thousand sound tentacles/proles and, yes, this ´friction´ becomes fruitful: a stimulating and synergistic rite of passage;

e) Certainly acerbic, the title in French refers to the fact that Villa, to be recognized in his country, had to go to Paris (posteriorly it would be New York) and thus gain prominence; only after that did he return and deserve more attention and respect in Brazilian land. And the deafening question remains: (in context) did much change from that time to now (if we think of modern and contemporary classical music made in Terra Brasilis)?;

f) Traveling on this train would be a saga through a Minas Gerais that no longer exists, part of the ghostly memories of Otacílio (here, both nostalgic and melancholic connotations);

g) Train can be procession, line, file, column, convoy, caravan. Thus there would be the establishment of a thread connecting Villa-Lobos to Melgaço and all those who came before and after the two. A spiritual family, as they say in the artistic universe. In this meaning, quite metaphysical since guided not necessarily by aesthetic kinship but attached to the ´musical priesthood´;

h) Train, as a verb, refers us to teach a particular skill or type of behavior through practice and instruction over a period of time. Therefore: tutor, prime, drill. Likewise, Ghost, if verb: collaborate, cooperate, help, go along, glide smoothly and effortlessly. It´s possible to deduce that Melgaço addresses part of the very essence of what it´s to be an Artist (a being far beyond providing mere entertainment or distraction).

(...)

I conclude by stitching together quotes from seven different personalities (respectively Edgar Allan Poe, Wassily Kandinsky, Andrei Tarkovsky, Novalis, Anish Kapoor, Patti Smith and Robert Duvall); the final text seems to me a suitable introduction to ´Train Fantôme´:

>> Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'
The Artist must TRAIN not only his eye but also his soul.
An Artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn't exist, for the Artist doesn't live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist. The Artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it.
Only an Artist can interpret the meaning of life.
We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an Artist to attempt to make wholeness.
An Artist is somebody who enters into competition with God.
God does guide the lives of individuals and does fill them with the Holy GHOST.<<

Keeping the metaphors, sometimes the Artist even is the winner." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

"I intend to make a detailed parallel between ´The Little Train of the Brazilian Countryman´ and ´Train Fantôme´.

Are there similarities? Or would they be exciting intentional discrepancies? Let us see what this diachronic mirror can reveal to us.

Getting to the point. Points. Some of them.

Villa-Lobos often (here is a case) drinks in the source of the traditional culture of the Brazilian people to arrive at a quite particular vision / Melgaço, in ´Train Fantôme´, preferred to seek references in the extensive work itself, mixing fragments (collected in several of his earlier spawns) that add to an original, until then unpublished material. He assumes himself as the source here; such fantasmatic offspring is metalinguistic;

Heitor, specifically in ´O Trenzinho do Caipira´, brings to light a conciliatory, picturesque, rooted perspective of his country. After all, it's precisely the country man he highlights. This is explicit. Realize that the train that gives name to the Toccata movement is called a little train / Otacílio, through the singing of certain birds, makes us conceive that ´his´ train even passes relatively close to coastal regions! (It´s worth mentioning that Minas Gerais is not a coastwise state). Thus, it´s crosses indeterminate geographies; plural states of mind, pointing to sensations impalpable, not localizable. It´s timeless too. The country of Heitor is the same of Otacílio but so different;

Villa-Lobos makes the orchestra emulate the noises that characterize a train that sets itself in motion, moves as usual and then arrives at its destination / Melgaço, concretely, uses sounds from real trains. Although, at times, they seem created from percussive instruments. There will always be that doubt, that Melgacian dubiousness;

Heitor induces us to a sense of externalization: our imagination indeed visualizes a train and its passage through Brazilian corners / Otacílio ´determines´ a voyage that, although it can also be realized in our mind, is expansively introspective (another paradox?), more open to both psychological and metaphysical parameters;

Villa-Lobos sets up a unique sequence of ´displacement´, without interruptions / Melgaço, figuratively, made several ´trips´. Full of stops and new shipments. A fact that makes us reflect: would it be the same odyssey but wider and contemplating more landscapes and stations or would be several from several locomotives?;

Heitor composes a melodic theme, quite identifiable, that runs throughout the Piece / Otacílio, heterogeneously, asserts more abstract and subjective ambiences;

Villa-Lobos embraces a compact orchestral corpus / Melgaço likes kaleidoscopic dismemberments. Through each new ´journey´, emphasizes a distinct family of instruments: strings or winds or ...;

Heitor presents a prism in which all the roles and functions (of the instruments) are well determined and fulfilled; the score and the ´script´ are followed strictly / Otacílio brings to the execution of his composition punctually impromptu, random elements etc. Occurs often an interpenetration between the instruments, a synesthetic spirit is in force;

Villa-Lobos reveals himself as modernist; this is such frank language there / Melgaço, in his ´Train Fantôme´, makes way for postmodernism (the contrast is singularly perceptible);

Heitor includes the composition commented in his Brazilian Bachian-pieces / Otacílio in his Bacchusian-pieces;

(in brief)

Villa-Lobos intentionally takes, in ´O Trenzinho do Caipira´, audible brushstrokes of a folkloric Brazil; it´s immanencial / Melgaço, divergent, sounds cosmopolitan. Nevertheless, if we focus on the last bars, they´re drums typically from Minas Gerais (its folk tradition) that we hear. There´s a clear transit through paradoxes, without frontiers. He visits and reinvents the Brazilian roots in the same manner that creates sonorities geared toward science fiction! An easy-to-identify self-portrait either is deconstructed (abolishing stereotypes or caricatures) or is internalized, introjected to the extreme as a flow of (un)consciousness in constant progression and mutation: transcendence in immanence | immanence in transcendence.

(...)

For me, ´Train Fantôme´ and ´The Little Train of the Brazilian Countryman´, they´re complementary. There are disparities that necessarily drive away but others, as the focused, make us see how much their distinctions value the respective identities and, in addition, make the horizon - of which they are part - more beautiful, rich and ample. As a kind of epiphanic mutualism. Otacílio Melgaço knew with mastery how to erect a tribute and, concomitantly, to dialogue in a sincere, propositive and challenging tonic way with Heitor Villa-Lobos. The same one that, when perceived that his creations were not always understood by his countrymen, uttered: ´I consider my works as letters I wrote to posterity, without waiting for an answer.´

Here is an answer, dear Villa." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

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I -

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:O_trenzinho_do_caipira_(toccata).ogg

II -

"Villa-Lobos is the best orchestrator of the 20th century." (Olivier Messiaen);

III -

In the year of composition, 1930, Villa-Lobos transcribed such movement for cello and piano, titled simply O Trenzinho do Caipira. This arrangement, which lasts about two minutes in performance, was premiered in São Paulo–Pirajuí in 1930, with Villa-Lobos himself playing the cello and João de Souza Lima the piano. The original, orchestral version was only first performed (in the context of the complete Bachianas No. 2) on 3 September 1934, at the Venice International Festival, with an orchestra conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos (Appleby 1988, 64–65).

An opposed point of view holds that the four movements of the orchestral Bachianas No. 2 was made from preexistent and unrelated pieces, three originally for cello and piano ( "O Canto do Capadócio", "O Canto da Nossa Terra", and "O Trenzinho do Caipira"), the other ("Lembrança do Sertão") for solo piano.

An unrelated a cappella chorus composition by Villa-Lobos, Trenzinho, setting a text by Catarina Santoro, was written in 1933, and premiered on 10 October 1939 by the Orfeão da Escola Argentina, conducted by the composer. Originally for three-part chorus, it was also adapted for four-part female chorus, in which form it was published in 1951 as number 31 in volume 2 of the composer's collection, Canto orfeônico;

IV -

Years later (1976), the melodic theme received lyrics composed by another great Brazilian personality: Ferreira Gullar (poet, playwright, essayist, art critic ...) in Poema Sujo:

"Lá vai o trem com o menino
Lá vai a vida a rodar
Lá vai ciranda e destino
Cidade noite a girar
Lá vai o trem sem destino
Pro dia novo encontrar
Correndo vai pela terra, vai pela serra, vai pelo mar
Cantando pela serra do luar
Correndo entre as estrelas a voar
No ar, no ar, no ar..."

...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.