T r o u b a d o u r

- Q u a t r o P e ç a s P a r a V i o l ã o -

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:06:53] 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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"Four Pieces For Acoustic Guitar.

[It´s worth mentioning: all we hear in this delicate and spectacular work are originally guitars - with nylon and steel strings -. Of course, as exceptional exceptions: the bell (enjoy the first track) and elements of nature (surrender yourself to the last.)]

Troubadour songs were usually monophonic. Fewer than 300 melodies out of an estimated 2500 survive. Most were composed by the troubadours themselves. Some were set to pre-existing pieces of music.

Otacílio Melgaço transcodes the entire poetics of minstrels in quintessential instrumental skeleton. Moreover, he behaves as a renovator, lighting to new metaphysical heights a very traditional context concomitantly assuming an intriguing avant-garde stance.

i) In ´Segrel´, the softness + sensitivity present in
levitative + unpredictable arpeggios;

ii) An almost minimalist sonic architecture with
flowered (+ reflowered) cycles (+ recycles) contained in
´Jogos Florais´;

iii) By means of ´En o sagrad´: the sublimity + sacredness
abducting us, hexing us, purifying us, transcending us
and making us transcend;

iv) The extraordinary Saga, monumental Pièce de Résistance (which even has as incidental Beethoven ´Moonlight Sonata´) replete with magical + mysterious atmospheres, prisms, specters (plus a sense even fabulously narrative proven, as opening/coda, by the interventions of natural sounds: wind, water, birds, ... in other wor(l)ds, - check the greyish + mesmerizing album cover - the constantly changing scenario of the eternal Bardian wanderer) that´s ´Troubadour´ itself.

´Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one´, said Ezra Pound. Four Pieces For Acoustic Guitar.
O.M., through ´Troubadour´, multiplies by four such ten things." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"The Inner Mounting Flames: ´to Compose, to Discuss, to Invent´.

The oldest mention of the word ´troubadour´ as ´trobadors´ is found in a 12th-century Occitan text by Cercamon. The English word ´troubadour´ is an exact rendition from a French word first recorded in 1575 in an historical context to mean ´langue d'oc poet at the court in the 12th and 13th century´. The French word is borrowed itself from the Occitan ´trobador´. It´s the oblique case of the nominative ´trobaire´ (composer), related to ´trobar´ (to compose, to discuss, to invent).

´To compose, to discuss, to invent´. This is exactly the triptych that
Mr. Melgaço explores and extrapolates here & now.

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry and courtly love. Most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires. The troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread into Italy and Spain. Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe: the Minnesang in Germany, trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal, and that of the trouvères in northern France. Dante Alighieri in his De vulgari eloquentia defined the troubadour lyric as fictio rethorica musicaque poita: rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. After the ´classical´ period around the turn of the 13th century and a mid-century resurgence, the art of the troubadours declined in the 14th century and eventually died out around the time of the Black Death (1348).

I recognize at least three motifs (or aspects, characteristics, constitutive parts) already mentioned when I hear ´Troubadour´. All as an abstract suggestion - since there´s no poeticized orality but - in its etymology - ´sensationaly´ declared. (Apropos, there´s pivotal poeticality instrumentalized!) Such abstraction is the heart of the purest imaginable concreteness because it´s condensed pollen audible! Three: I refer to Courtly Love, Metaphysics and Intellectuality. The first two are immediately detected by the way the own peculiar sonorities of the four Pieces inspire us. The third, a Melgacian recontextualisation based on ´how the composer and multi-instrumentalist ingeniously conceived and erected his creations´.

Yet a couple of questions could persist:

How to absorb the ´aura´ of the troubadours setting aside the lyric poetry?

I believe that proposing the act of invent, discuss and composing in its more magmatic condition. Seeking pristine perceptions, intuitions, feelings, impressions ... still, therefore, in a state prior to the translation into words, verses, cansos or sirventes. An anterior (and thus more virginal) state to normativities, crystallized stylistic rules. With idiosyncrasy, it's what Otacílio does.

But there must be a previous asking to the previous one: how to absorb ´auraticly´ the trovadorism nowadays?

As it thunders Gustav Mahler: ´Tradition is not to preserve the ashes, but to pass on the flame.´ It's what - definitely - Otacílio does." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - The early study of the troubadours focused intensely on their origins. No academic consensus was ever achieved in the area. Today, one can distinguish at least eleven competing theories: Arabic (also Arabist or Hispano-Arabic); Bernardine-Marianist or Christian; Celtic or Chivalric-Matriarchal; Classical Latin;
(Crypto-)Cathar; Liturgical; Feudal-social or -sociological; Folklore or Spring Folk Ritual; Medieval Latin or Mediolatin (Goliardic); Neoplatonic. Works can be grouped into three styles: the trobar leu (light), trobar ric (rich), and trobar clus (closed);

II - The Troubadour is a nightclub located in West Hollywood, California, USA, at 9081 Santa Monica Boulevard just east of Doheny Drive and the border of Beverly Hills. It was opened in 1957 by Doug Weston as a coffee house on La Cienega Boulevard, then moved to its current location shortly after opening and has remained open continuously since.

It was a major center for folk music in the 1960s

[a clue: it´s undeniable the relationship between trovadorism and folk music (R e v i e w e r s' N o t e)],

and subsequently for singer-songwriters and rock.

Played an important role in the careers of Van Morrison, The Byrds, Joni Mitchell, Buffalo Springfield, James Taylor, Carole King, Elton John and other prominent and successful performers (include Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Fleetwood Mac, Rickie Lee Jones, The Everly Brothers, Al Stewart), who played performances there establishing their future fame. Featured new wave and punk in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Today the venue is well known for presenting emerging UK artists (Radiohead, Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Lawson) and it´s also still a popular venue to showcase singer-songwriters like Joanna Newsom;

III - In 1974, John Lennon and his friend Harry Nilsson were ejected from the club for drunkenly heckling the Smothers Brothers.

...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.