ÉCOUTE RÉDUITE / ÉCOUTE ÉTENDUE (on Richard Wagner´s Tristan und Isolde, Prelude & Ludwig van Beethoven´s 7th symphony, 2nd movement) {Otacílio Melgaço} [duration 00:45:00], by Otacílio Melgaço (2024)

É C O U T E
R É D U I T E
/
É C O U T E
É T E N D U E

On Richard Wagner´s Tristan und Isolde, Prelude
&
Ludwig van Beethoven´s 7th symphony, 2nd movement

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

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)

"P r e a m b l e

The Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, is a symphony in four movements composed by Ludwig van Beethoven between 1811 and 1812, while improving his health in the Bohemian spa town of Teplice. The work is dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries. At its premiere, Beethoven was noted as remarking that it was one of his best works. The second movement, Allegretto, was the most popular movement and had to be encored. The instant popularity of the Allegretto resulted in its frequent performance separate from the complete symphony. His admirer, Richard Wagner, referring to the lively rhythms which permeate the work, called it the ´apotheosis of the dance´.

By Wagner to a German libretto by the composer (based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan [de] by Gottfried von Strassburg), it is an opera in three acts, Tristan und Isolde (T. and I.), WWV 90. It was created between 1857 and 1859, inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly The World as Will and Representation), as well as by Richard's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, Tristan was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension.

´The Prelude and Liebestod (Love-Death) comprise the beginning and ending of the opera. The Prelude opens with the cellos softly playing four notes. The last note fades into an extraordinary chord played by oboes, bassoons, and English horn. This chord, the famous ´Tristan chord´, sounds strange because it is an unresolved dissonance, an academic way of saying that it sounds like it's leading to something. But because Wagner, at this point, withholds resolution, the chord is, at this point, a beginning without an end. What follows is a lush orchestral work that charts the psychology of the opera, which itself explores the unexplainable, primal nature of love. The chord returns during the course of the opera, but it is only resolved during the work’s final, ecstatic closing Liebestod. It is the culmination of the opera’s tragic events, set in motion when Tristan and Isolde drink a love potion. Tristan, though, has claimed Isolde on behalf of his lord, King Marke. When Marke discovers the lovers together, one of the king’s knights stabs Tristan, who returns to his fortress to die. Isolde has just arrived to find Tristan dead when the Liebestod begins. Her worldly surroundings fade away as she contemplates sinking unconscious into supreme bliss and finally consummating her love with Tristan in death. The passage builds to a climax as ´waves of refreshing breezes´ begin envelop Isolde (at the words ´Heller schallend, mich umwallend´) and again as she imagines expiring in ´the vast wave of the world’s breath´ (´in des Welt-Atems wehendem All´). She sinks down as the winds, over luminous violins, float to a resolution of the chord from the Prelude´, clarifies us John Mangum.

P h e n o m e n a
O f
I n c r e d i b l e
A d a p t a b i l i t y
A n d
N o n i n d e p e n d e n c e
R o a m i n g,
H o m e l e s s,
A m o n g
T h e
S p h e r e s
O f
K e y s

Otacílio Melgaço in its present O p u s M e t a p h y s i c u m proposes to us an ethereal junction betwixt the Wagnerian ´Prelude´ and the Beethovenian ´Allegretto´. The result, in my view, confirms Prometheus' predicates. He is credited with the creation of humanity from clay, and who defies the gods by stealing fire and giving it to mortals as civilization. The Titan ´gottheit des feuers´ is known for his intelligence and for being a champion of mankind, and is also seen as the author of the human arts and sciences generally. The way Melgaço - subtly but in depth - challenges both Germanic ´divinized´ myths makes him, I have no doubt, one of the best avatars of a contemporary Προμηθεύς (Promēthéus).

I choose, randomly, some versatile details to gain a ´rotating beacon´ to demonstrate how the posture of the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist always reveals itself in Promethean ubiquity: 1- Realize how much there is an appreciation of timbristic research to the point that, with each release, we come across or the reinvention of the ´instrument ontology´ or its constant evolutionary metamorphosis; 2- Enjoy all the changes directly linked to the structure of the original sound Pieces, from new musical tones to the intervention in notes played (in number, continuance, etc.) even as, and therefore revealing unexpected and surprising minutiae, the slower dimensions of the durations of the entire sonic Corpus [a certain fetish of Otacílio]; 3- Be ecstatic [dynamic (and, in its symbolism, - between ridges and valleys, convexities and concavities - metaphorical) proof of great genius, ingenuity, grandeur and halo] with the hieratic solemnity of each ´pianissimo´ and the volcanic monumentality of every ´crescendo´; 4- Observe how there is enough mastery in the design of thematic - and aesthetic - junctions (here, Prelude+Allegretto and, as far as I know, something never done before) making us witness an enthralling and formidable uniqueness; 5- Confirm the polysemic richness of all artistic treatment as is the case with the album cover image (the two human figures - or are the columns that - would represent Beethoven and Wagner? Or both Listenings mentioned in the heading? Or all simultaneously? Or none of that?) and so on ...

I draw the attention of Ladies and Gentlemen to a curious fact: admiration for Ludwig´s Symphony No. 7 has not been universal. Friedrich Wieck, who was present during rehearsals, said that ´the consensus, among musicians and laymen alike, was that Beethoven must have composed such work in a drunken state´. Perhaps this makes sense, but contrary to the sardonic connotation given by Wieck. If we consider that there is an almost extra sensory (otherworldly?) inclination in the Melgacian version, if the master born in Bonn was indeed in an ´altered status of consciousness´ ... this would only confirm the epiphanic degree of the two sound Pieces in question.

Now about - the Leipziger - Wagner, the conductor Bruno Walter heard his first Tristan und Isolde in 1889 as a student: ´So there I sat in the topmost gallery of the Berlin Opera House, and from the first sound of the cellos my heart contracted spasmodically.... Never before has my soul been deluged with such floods of sound and passion, never had my heart been consumed by such yearning and sublime bliss ...´. Marcel Proust, greatly influenced by Richard, refers to such ´meisterstück´ and its ´inexhaustible repetitions´ throughout his novel À la recherche du temps perdu. Proust describes the prelude theme as ´linked to the future, to the reality of the human soul, of which it was one of the most special and distinctive ornaments.´

Conclusively, I believe that the two precious dicta can be also destined to O.M.'s Oeuvre: hearts spasmodically contracted and consumed by sublime desire and ecstasy and thus, launching us towards the future, our human souls - flooded with sound and passion -, revealed, ornamentally, in their most special and distinctive Realities." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"ÉCOUTE RÉDUITE / ÉCOUTE ÉTENDUE

Reduced Listening / Expanded Listening.

Melgaço went to Pierre Schaeffer and its theories about hearing as the basis for giving title to the album highlighted here.

As the - Otacílio's countryman - independent scholar Igor Reis Reyner, he turned to Michel Chion to masterfully explore fascinating terminology: ´Reduced Listening is a listening attitude, it is a directing of listening to the ´ouïr´ and ´entendre´ functions. It is an escape from conditioned listening, cultural and natural listening, which treat sound, respectively, as a sign and index. Against the ordinary listening, which takes the sound as a vehicle, reduced listening is ´an unnatural process, which goes against all conditioning´. However, its aim is not to deny the tapping of the sound as an index or sign, or to put in check the notions of listening that we have as if we had been deceived by our sense. This listening proposal seeks to 'untangle the different constitutive intentions, and return the intentions to the sound object, while supporting the perceptions that take it as a vehicle, to define it through a new specific intentionality, that of reduced listening'. It is ´the listening attitude that consists of listening to the sound by itself, as a sound object, abstracting from its real or supposed provenance and from the sense of which it can be a carrier´. The reduced listening takes effect through an attitude borrowed from phenomenology, epoché. In a very objective way, Chion defines epoché in a phenomenological, philosophical sense. It is an attitude of ´suspension´ and ´placing in parentheses´ of the problem of the existence of the outside world and its objects, whereby consciousness makes a return on itself and becomes aware of its perceptual activity as the founder of its ´intentional objects´. Epoché is opposed to 'naive coffee' in an outside world where the objects themselves, causes of perception, would be found. It is also opposed to the ´psychologist´ scheme that considers perceptions as ´subjective´ traits of ´objective´ physical stimuli. Finally, it is distinguished from the 'Cartesian methodical doubt', in the sense that it abstains from any thesis about reality or illusion. And, concerning listening, he says: Epoché represents a deconditioning of listening habits, a return to the 'original experience' of perception, to apprehend at its own level the sound object as a support, as a substrate for the perceptions that take it as a vehicle for a meaning to be understood or a cause to be identified. It is not a matter of believing in an original nothingness or zeroing out the experience. It is an attitude towards the suspension of everything that is not the sound within the sound perception, in the interest of listening to sound in its materiality, in its substance, in its sensitive dimensions. In essence, the process does not materialize purely, it is a direction of the listening attitude, which has as its final intention, less the knowledge of the sound than the awareness of the perception itself. The object sound is defined in relation to reduced listening as an object of perception. Reduced listening is defined in relation to the sound object as perceptual activity. They are related.´

I think that, from such substantial narrative above, we can all conclude what, as an outcome, O.M. complemented as Expanded Listening. Just press the ´Play´ key and open up to all hearings of this penetrative Metaphysicum Opus." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

I - Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven)

The second movement in A minor has a tempo marking of Allegretto ("a little lively"), making it slow only in comparison to the other three movements. This movement was encored at the premiere and has remained popular since. Its reliance on the string section makes it a good example of Beethoven's advances in orchestral writing for strings, building on the experimental innovations of Haydn.

The movement is structured in a double variation form. It begins with the main melody played by the violas and cellos, an ostinato (repeated rhythmic figure, or ground bass, or passacaglia of a quarter note, two eighth notes and two quarter notes).

This melody is then played by the second violins while the violas and cellos play a second melody, described by George Grove as, "like a string of beauties hand-in-hand, each afraid to lose her hold on her neighbours". The first violins then take the first melody while the second violins take the second. This progression culminates with the wind section playing the first melody while the first violin plays the second.

After this, the music changes from A minor to A major as the clarinets take a calmer melody to the background of light triplets played by the violins. This section ends thirty-seven bars later with a quick descent of the strings on an A minor scale, and the first melody is resumed and elaborated upon in a strict fugato;

II - Composer and music author Antony Hopkins says of the symphony:

The Seventh Symphony perhaps more than any of the others gives us a feeling of true spontaneity; the notes seem to fly off the page as we are borne along on a floodtide of inspired invention. Beethoven himself spoke of it fondly as "one of my best works". Who are we to dispute his judgment?;

III - The opera Tristan und Isolde was enormously influential among Western classical composers and provided direct inspiration to composers such as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Benjamin Britten. Other composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky formulated their styles in contrast to Wagner's musical legacy. Many see Tristan as a milestone on the move away from common practice harmony and tonality and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th century. Both Wagner's libretto style and music were also profoundly influential on the symbolist poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century;

IV - Klaas A. Posthuma argues that neither Tristan nor Isolde tries for one moment to ignore feelings of love for the other or to overcome them. On the contrary, they yield to their feelings with all their hearts – but secretly. Such behavior has nothing whatever to do with Schopenhauer's claim. Another important point in Schopenhauer's philosophy is his view that happiness cannot be found with one woman only – his reason for never marrying. But for Tristan there is only one woman, Isolde, with Death as alternative. And this leads to the inevitable conclusion that it was not Schopenhauer and his doctrine that were responsible for creating of Wagner's sublime music drama but his own unfulfilled longing for the woman he met and loved during these years, Mathilde Wesendonck;

V - Other works based on the opera, among a vast list, include:

Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou, 1929 film score, Opera Frankfurt, director Carl Bamberger;

Hans Werner Henze's Tristan: Préludes für Klavier, Tonbänder und Orchester (1973)

p l u s

In Alfred Hitchco*ck's 1963 film The Birds, a recording of Tristan is prominently displayed in the scene in which Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) resignedly reveals to Melanie (Tippi Hedren) of her unrequited love for Mitch. For Camille Paglia, the visual inclusion of the LP cover, with the opera's 'theme of self-immolation through doomed love' signifies that Annie is a forlorn romantic;

Lars von Trier's 2011 film Melancholia prominently features music from the prelude;

VI - Friedrich Nietzsche, who in his younger years was one of Wagner's staunchest allies, wrote that, for him, "Tristan and Isolde is the real opus metaphysicum of all art ... insatiable and sweet craving for the secrets of night and death ... it is overpowering in its simple grandeur". In a letter to his friend Erwin Rohde in October 1868, Nietzsche described his reaction to Tristan's prelude: "I simply cannot bring myself to remain critically aloof from this music; every nerve in me is atwitch, and it has been a long time since I had such a lasting sense of ecstasy as with this overture". Even after his break with Wagner, Nietzsche continued to consider Tristan a masterpiece: "Even now I am still in search of a work which exercises such a dangerous fascination, such a spine-tingling and blissful infinity as Tristan – I have sought in vain, in every art."

...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.