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Trommeln in der Nacht (Konzertst​ü​ck f​ü​r Percussion) {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 15​:​44]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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T r o m m e l n I n D e r N a c h t

(K o n z e r t s t ü c k F ü r P e r c u s s i o n)

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 15:44] 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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"´I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.´ (E.V.)

Konzertstück, in German, means Concertino. Concertino is the diminutive of Concerto, thus literally a small or short Concerto. ´Trommeln in der Nacht´, if translated into quintessential musical syntax, refers me to the title of the first novel by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, ´Voyage au Bout de la Nuit´ (Journey to the End of the Night). The whole apparatus of Timpani (Kettledrums), Snare drum, Bass drum, Cymbals etc throws us into a deep shadowy expedition, altisonant Orphic voyage endowed with admirable synesthetic potency. Although - leaving aside, for at least fifteen minutes and forty-four seconds, some pessimistic rancidity of the French novelist, pamphleteer and physician - the end of the night also is the beginning of a new day, isn´t? In my perception, this may be the (quite in line with our time) sensory-auditory and metaphoric trajectory proposed by the composer and multi-instrumentalist Otacílio Melgaço here. Monsieur Céline once said ´To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength.´ Perchance, in its core, it's a way of defining art itself. As well as ´Trommeln in der Nacht´ imaginatively, usefully and strengthly does.

Everything occurs without truce, Mr. Melgaço does not give us opportunities to snort; the fluidity conditions our absorption to a state close to the contained convulsion, sometimes primitivist sometimes fertilizing us with a viscerality typical of becoming. In this ritualistic continuum, the hectic narrative is developed and through strategic and transient interventions, there´s an analogy with the pulsation of the traveler (from those without comfort zones to punctual - or definitive - rest) who always witnesses landscapes through the lens of displacement. Historically, when I heard the sequence with whistles, I immediately remembered ´Ionisation´ (1929–1931), a musical composition by Edgard Varèse written for thirteen percussionists. It was among the first concert hall compositions for percussion ensemble alone (although Alexander Tcherepnin had created an entire movement for percussion alone in his Symphony No. 1 from 1927). I believe it´s an honorable reference (in any case, such as Edgard, Melgaço was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena) but the work of Otacílio is more condensed, primal and he prefers the instruments in purposeful expressionistic intersection, even voraciously tangles. ´There is an idea, the basis of an internal structure, expanded and split into different shapes or groups of sound constantly changing in shape, direction, and speed, attracted and repulsed by various forces´. Curiously, the grand finale is not bombastic. Even being in, say, high relief: there´s a subtlety that does not cease to amaze us. Perhaps, after the bodily struggle (and mental and animic, it's up to you) involving the ´crossing of the night´, we need a little delicacy to introject the first rays of a revivifying sun. However ... who knows is everything the endless nightfall and the ultimate light comes from the midnight sun? This, as in great artistic proles, is left open.

I culminate with the well-known Varèsian maxim: ´Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs´. Mostly, it´s undeniable. Notwithstanding, here and now - musically and visionarily, by means of ´Trommeln in der Nacht (Konzertstück für Percussion)´, we´re all under the cloak of the same Time. Similar to the others that surrendered to the bewitched sagas but, Ladies and Gentlemen, only more starry." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Drums in the Night, a ´Comedy in Five Acts by Bertolt Brecht´.

For what is known, there´s no designed relationship between the Melgacian work and the Brechtian. But maybe with two exceptions.

The first: Expressionism. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality. I can say that such Concertino has expressionist sonic traits. And they´re in the quoted dramaturgy. Falckenberg, who was the head of the Kammerspiele along with Benno Bing, directed the play in a manner that we would not now recognize as Brechtian, utilizing the angular, contorted poses typical of the theatre of Expressionism. Similarly, Reigbert's design consisted of contorted, angular lines and foreshortened perspectives (similar to those used in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920). Elements of Expressionism, or perhaps ´realistic-Expressistic´ elements (according to Erwin Faber), can be found in designs for the Munich production. Reigbert's rendering for the set design for Act V of Drums in the Night, for example, contains a figure standing by the bridge that is very much like Edvard Munch's figure (also standing by a bridge) in his painting of 1893, The Scream. Yes, shortly (as a short Concert), such repercussive ´Drums in the Night´ is, on current days, a polysemic expression of the Munchian Scream (and shout, yell, cry out, shriek, screech, bellow, bawl, howl or call), I guess. One of the most subtly deafening (in its impactful predicates).

The second: it's a very particular interpretation and paradoxical with what I wrote in the previous paragraph because closely linked to (physical) reality. An axiomatic question strikes me right now: only superficial artists are not paradoxical. Therefore, Mr. Melgaço is pure paradox; paradox in magmatic state. And the expression already quoted, ´realistic-Expressistic´, becomes more interesting at this level of my arguments inasmuch as this sound Piece is probably part of an O.M.´s cycle which have intrinsically a vigorous political dimension. Thunderingly non-passive. As an artist's point of view connected with the directions that civilization has taken (besides being someone who is constantly in the forefront of finding a/the north). Both a denunciation against the proliferation of retrograde waves around the world (that look like many serpent's eggs spreading lately by the planet) as an alert and a fraternal act on behalf of those who fight for humanistic values (which are beginning to manifest themselves more and more in counterpart and therefore this seems to me the resounding justification for the synchronized release of the extraordinary percussive creation that I'm focusing on). To make ´the drums be played and heard throughout the night which seems to be gradually approaching´, it´s vital that - as far as silence sometimes means omission or capitulation - let us not allow both the impetus for individual freedoms and the cry for a sense of fraternity/solidarity between all (people and nations) be gagged, stifled or mowed down. I believe that thus one of the learnings contained in this small Concert is: the challenge of being empathic if ´through the darkness of the night´ has a gargantuan proportion but, in compensation, the effects and fruits of such conquest are more pervasive and perennial." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Drums in the Night (Trommeln in der Nacht) is a play by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht wrote it between 1919 and 1920, and it received its first theatrical production in 1922. It is in the expressionist style of Ernst Toller and Georg Kaiser. The play—along with Baal

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and In the Jungle—won the Kleist Prize for 1922 (although it was widely assumed, perhaps because Drums was the only play of the three to have been produced at that point, that the prize had been awarded to Drums alone); the play was performed all over Germany as a result. Brecht later claimed that he had only written it as a source of income;

II - Drums in the Night is one of Brecht's earliest plays, written before he became a Marxist, but already the importance of class struggle in Brecht's thinking is apparent. According to Lion Feuchtwanger, the play was originally entitled Spartakus. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League—who were instrumental in the 'Spartacist uprising' in Berlin in January 1919—had only recently been abducted, tortured and killed by Freikorps soldiers.

...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.

credits

released January 31, 2017

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | engineering & sound design | art design | production | direction}

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
from
Minas Gerais,
Brazil.
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"Music is like a bewitched Mistress." (Paul Klee)
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