Ástor Piazzolla
Encyclopedia
Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla (March 11, 1921 – July 4, 1992) was an Argentine
tango
composer and bandoneón
player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango
, incorporating elements from jazz
and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneónist, he regularly performed his own compositions with different ensembles.
, Argentina, in 1921 to Italian parents, Vicente "Nonino" Piazzolla and Asunta Manetti. His grandfather, a sailor and fisherman named Pantaleone Piazzolla, had immigrated to Mar del Plata from Trani
, a seaport town in the southeastern Italian region of Apulia
, at the end of the 19th century. Ástor Piazzolla spent most of his childhood with his family in New York City, where he was exposed to both jazz and the music of J. S. Bach
at an early age. While there, he acquired fluency in four languages: Spanish, English, French, and Italian. He began to play the bandoneon after his father, nostalgic for his homeland, spotted one in a New York pawn
shop. At the age of 13, he met Carlos Gardel
, another great figure of tango, who invited the young prodigy to join him on his current tour. Much to his dismay, Piazzolla's father deemed that he was not old enough to go along. While he did play a young paper boy in Gardel’s movie El día que me quieras
http://www.tangomalaysia.com/pages/tangoinfo/MuscicianAstor.htm, this early disappointment of being kept from the tour proved to be a blessing in disguise, as it was on this tour that Gardel and his entire band perished in a plane crash. In later years, Piazzolla made light of this near miss, joking that had his father not been so careful, he wouldn't be playing the bandoneon—he'd be playing the harp.
He returned to Argentina in 1937, where strictly traditional tango still reigned, and played in night clubs with a series of groups including the orchestra of Anibal Troilo
, then considered the top bandoneon player and bandleader in Buenos Aires. The pianist Arthur Rubinstein
—then living in Buenos Aires
—advised him to study with the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera
. Delving into scores of Stravinsky
, Bartók
, Ravel
, and others, he rose early each morning to hear the Teatro Colón orchestra rehearse while continuing a gruelling performing schedule in the tango clubs at night. In 1950 he composed the soundtrack to the film Bólidos de acero
.
At Ginastera's urging, in 1953 Piazzolla entered his Buenos Aires Symphony in a composition contest, and won a grant from the French government to study in Paris with the legendary French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger
. In 1954 he and his first wife, the artist Dedé Wolff, left Buenos Aires and their two children (Diana aged 11 and Daniel aged 10) behind and travelled to Paris. The insightful Boulanger turned Piazzolla's life around in a day, as he related in his own words:
Piazzolla returned from New York to Argentina in 1955, formed the Octeto Buenos Aires with Enrico Mario Francini and Hugo Baralis on violins, Atilio Stampone
on piano, Leopoldo Federico as second bandoneon, Horacio Malvicino on electric guitar, José Bragato
on cello and Juan Vasallo on double bass to play tangos, and never looked back.
Upon introducing his new approach to the tango (nuevo tango), he became a controversial figure among Argentines both musically and politically. The Argentine saying "in Argentina everything may change – except the tango" suggests some of the resistance he found in his native land. However, his music gained acceptance in Europe and North America, and his reworking of the tango was embraced by some liberal segments of Argentine society, who were pushing for political changes in parallel to his musical revolution.
During the period of Argentine military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, Piazzolla lived in Italy, but returned many times to Argentina, recorded there, and on at least one occasion had lunch with the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla
. However, his relationship with the dictator might have been less than friendly, as recounted in Ástor Piazzolla, A manera de memorias (a comprehensive collection of interviews, constituting a memoir):
In 1990 he suffered thrombosis
in Paris, and died two years later in Buenos Aires
.
Among his followers, his own protégé Marcelo Nisinman
is the best known innovator of the tango music of the new millennium, while Pablo Ziegler
, pianist with Piazzolla's second quintet, has assumed the role of principal custodian of nuevo tango, extending the jazz influence in the style. The Brazilian guitarist Sergio Assad
has also experimented with folk-derived, complex virtuoso compositions that show Piazzolla's structural influence while steering clear of tango sounds; and Osvaldo Golijov
has acknowledged Piazzolla as perhaps the greatest influence on his globally oriented, eclectic compositions for classical and klezmer performers.
Piazzolla's nuevo tango was distinct from the traditional tango
in its incorporation of elements of jazz
, its use of extended harmonies and dissonance, its use of counterpoint
, and its ventures into extended compositional forms. As Argentine psychoanalyst Carlos Kuri has pointed out, Piazzolla's fusion of tango with this wide range of other recognizable Western musical elements was so successful that it produced a new individual style transcending these influences. It is precisely this success, and individuality, that makes it hard to pin down where particular influences reside in his compositions, but some aspects are clear. The use of the passacaglia
technique of a circulating bass line and harmonic sequence, invented and much used in 17th and 18th century baroque music
but also central to the idea of jazz "changes", predominates in most of Piazzolla's mature compositions. Another clear reference to the baroque is the often complex and virtuosic counterpoint
that sometimes follows strict fugal behavior but more often simply allows each performer in the group to assert his voice. A further technique that emphasises this sense of democracy and freedom among the musicians is improvisation
that is borrowed from jazz in concept, but in practice involves a different vocabulary of scales and rhythms that stay within the parameters of the established tango sound-world. Pablo Ziegler
has been particularly responsible for developing this aspect of the style both within Piazzolla's groups and since the composer's death.
With the composition of Adiós Nonino
in 1959, Piazzolla established a standard structural pattern for his compositions, involving a formal pattern of fast-slow-fast-slow-coda
, with the fast sections emphasizing gritty tango rhythms and harsh, angular melodic figures, and the slower sections usually making use of the string instrument in the group and/or Piazzolla's own bandoneón
as lyrical soloists. The piano tends to be used throughout as a percussive rhythmic backbone, while the electric guitar either joins in this role or spins filigree improvisations; the double bass parts are usually of little interest, but provide an indispensable rugged thickness to the sound of the ensemble. The quintet
of bandoneon, violin, piano, electric guitar and double bass was Piazzolla's preferred setup on two extended occasions during his career, and most critics consider it to be the most successful instrumentation for his works. This is due partly to its great efficiency in terms of sound – it covers or imitates most sections of a symphony orchestra, including the percussion which is improvised by all players on the bodies of their instruments – and the strong expressive identity it permits each individual musician. With a style that is both rugged and intricate, such a setup augments the compositions' inherent characteristics.
Despite the prevalence of the quintet formation and the ABABC compositional structure, Piazzolla consistently experimented with other musical forms and instrumental combinations. In 1965 an album was released containing collaborations between Piazzolla and Jorge Luis Borges
where Borges's poetry was narrated over very avant-garde music by Piazzolla including the use of dodecaphonic (twelve-tone
) rows, free non-melodic improvisation on all instruments, and modal
harmonies and scales. In 1968 Piazzolla wrote and produced an "operita", María de Buenos Aires
, that employed a larger ensemble including flute, percussion, multiple strings and three vocalists, and juxtaposed movements in Piazzolla's own style with several pastiche numbers ranging from waltz and hurdy-gurdy to a piano/narrator bar-room scena straight out of Casablanca
.
By the 1970s Piazzolla was living in Rome, managed by the Italian agent Aldo Pagani, and exploring a leaner, more fluid musical style drawing on more jazz influence, and with simpler, more continuous forms. Pieces that exemplify this new direction include Libertango
and most of the Suite Troileana, written in memory of the late Anibal Troilo. In the 1980s Piazzolla was wealthy enough, for the first time, to become relatively autonomous artistically, and wrote some of his most ambitious multi-movement works. These included Tango Suite for the virtuoso guitar duo Sergio
and Odair Assad; Histoire du Tango, where a flutist and guitarist tell the history of tango in four chunks of music styled at thirty-year intervals; and La Camorra
, a suite in three ten minute movements, inspired by the Neapolitan crime family and exploring symphonic concepts of large-scale form, thematic development, contrasts of texture and massive accumulations of ensemble sound. After making three albums in New York with the second quintet and producer Kip Hanrahan
, two of which he described on separate occasions as "the greatest thing I've done", he disbanded the quintet, formed a sextet with an extra bandoneon, cello, bass, electric guitar, and piano, and wrote music for this ensemble that was even more adventurous harmonically and structurally than any of his previous works (Preludio y Fuga; Sex-tet). Had he not suffered an incapacitating stroke on the way to Notre Dame mass in 1990, it is likely that he would have continued to use his popularity as a performer of his own works to experiment in relative safety with even more audacious musical techniques, while possibly responding to the surging popularity of non-Western musics by finding ways to incorporate new styles into his own. In his musical professionalism and open-minded attitude to existing styles he held the mindset of an 18th century composing performer such as Handel or Mozart, who were anxious to assimilate all national "flavors" of their day into their own compositions, and who always wrote with both first-hand performing experience and a sense of direct social relationship with their audiences. This may have resulted in a backlash amongst conservative tango aficionados in Argentina, but in the rest of the West it was the key to his extremely sympathetic reception among classical and jazz musicians, both seeing some of the best aspects of their musical practices reflected in his work.
Gerry Mulligan
. His numerous compositions include orchestral work such as the "Concierto para bandoneón, orquesta, cuerdas y percusión", "Doble concierto para bandoneón y guitarra", "Tres tangos sinfónicos" and "Concierto de Nácar para 9 tanguistas y orquesta", pieces for the solo classical guitar—the Cinco Piezas (1980), as well as song-form compositions that still today are well known by the general public in his country, like "Balada para un loco" (Ballad for a madman) and Adiós Nonino
(dedicated to his father) which he recorded many times with different musicians and ensembles. Biographers estimate that Piazzolla wrote around 3,000 pieces and recorded around 500.
In the summer of 1985 he appeared with his Quinteto Tango Nuevo at the Almeida Theatre
in London for a week-long engagement. On September 6, 1987, his quintet gave a concert in New York's Central Park
, which was recorded and, in 1994, released in compact disk format as The Central Park Concert. http://www.piazzolla.org/works2/thecentral.html
see also "Tangata" – the music of Astor Piazzolla...the Manny Bobenrieth Ensemble, R&L Records
Video recordings
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
tango
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
composer and bandoneón
Bandoneón
The bandoneón is a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay. It plays an essential role in the orquesta típica, the tango orchestra...
player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango
Nuevo tango
Tango Nuevo - either a form of music in which new elements are incorporated into traditional Argentine tango, or an evolution of tango dance that began to develop in the 1980s...
, incorporating elements from jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and classical music. A virtuoso bandoneónist, he regularly performed his own compositions with different ensembles.
Biography
Piazzolla was born in Mar del PlataMar del Plata
Mar del Plata is an Argentine city located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, south of Buenos Aires. Mar del Plata is the second largest city of Buenos Aires Province. The name "Mar del Plata" had apparently the sense of "sea of the Río de la Plata region" or "adjoining sea to the Río de la Plata"...
, Argentina, in 1921 to Italian parents, Vicente "Nonino" Piazzolla and Asunta Manetti. His grandfather, a sailor and fisherman named Pantaleone Piazzolla, had immigrated to Mar del Plata from Trani
Trani
Trani is a seaport of Apulia, southern Italy, on the Adriatic Sea, in the new Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani , and 40 km by railway West-Northwest of Bari.- History :...
, a seaport town in the southeastern Italian region of Apulia
Apulia
Apulia is a region in Southern Italy bordering the Adriatic Sea in the east, the Ionian Sea to the southeast, and the Strait of Òtranto and Gulf of Taranto in the south. Its most southern portion, known as Salento peninsula, forms a high heel on the "boot" of Italy. The region comprises , and...
, at the end of the 19th century. Ástor Piazzolla spent most of his childhood with his family in New York City, where he was exposed to both jazz and the music of J. S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
at an early age. While there, he acquired fluency in four languages: Spanish, English, French, and Italian. He began to play the bandoneon after his father, nostalgic for his homeland, spotted one in a New York pawn
Pawnbroker
A pawnbroker is an individual or business that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral...
shop. At the age of 13, he met Carlos Gardel
Carlos Gardel
Carlos Gardel was a singer, songwriter and actor, and is perhaps the most prominent figure in the history of tango. He was born in Toulouse, France, although he never acknowledged his birthplace publicly, and there are still claims of his birth in Uruguay. He lived in Argentina from the age of two...
, another great figure of tango, who invited the young prodigy to join him on his current tour. Much to his dismay, Piazzolla's father deemed that he was not old enough to go along. While he did play a young paper boy in Gardel’s movie El día que me quieras
El día que me quieras
El día que me quieras is a song composed by Carlos Gardel, an Argentinian singer-musician, with text by Alfredo Le Pera. It became a heavily recorded tango standard, even by artists outside of the realm of tango.-Luis Miguel version:...
http://www.tangomalaysia.com/pages/tangoinfo/MuscicianAstor.htm, this early disappointment of being kept from the tour proved to be a blessing in disguise, as it was on this tour that Gardel and his entire band perished in a plane crash. In later years, Piazzolla made light of this near miss, joking that had his father not been so careful, he wouldn't be playing the bandoneon—he'd be playing the harp.
He returned to Argentina in 1937, where strictly traditional tango still reigned, and played in night clubs with a series of groups including the orchestra of Anibal Troilo
Aníbal Troilo
Aníbal Carmelo Troilo was an Argentine tango musician.Anibal Troilo was a bandoneon player, composer, and bandleader in Argentina. His orquesta típica was among the most popular with social dancers during the golden age of tango , but he changed to a concert sound by the late 1950s...
, then considered the top bandoneon player and bandleader in Buenos Aires. The pianist Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein
Arthur Rubinstein KBE was a Polish-American pianist. He received international acclaim for his performances of the music of a variety of composers...
—then living in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
—advised him to study with the Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Ginastera
Alberto Evaristo Ginastera was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important Latin American classical composers.- Biography :...
. Delving into scores of Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
, Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, and others, he rose early each morning to hear the Teatro Colón orchestra rehearse while continuing a gruelling performing schedule in the tango clubs at night. In 1950 he composed the soundtrack to the film Bólidos de acero
Bólidos de acero
Bólidos de acero is a 1950 Argentine romantic drama film musical directed and written by Carlos Torres Ríos with music by Ástor Piazzolla.The film is based on tango dancing, an integral part of Argentine culture.-Cast:...
.
At Ginastera's urging, in 1953 Piazzolla entered his Buenos Aires Symphony in a composition contest, and won a grant from the French government to study in Paris with the legendary French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
. In 1954 he and his first wife, the artist Dedé Wolff, left Buenos Aires and their two children (Diana aged 11 and Daniel aged 10) behind and travelled to Paris. The insightful Boulanger turned Piazzolla's life around in a day, as he related in his own words:
Piazzolla returned from New York to Argentina in 1955, formed the Octeto Buenos Aires with Enrico Mario Francini and Hugo Baralis on violins, Atilio Stampone
Atilio Stampone
Atilio Stampone is an Argentine pianist, composer and arranger prominent in the Tango genre.-Life and work:He was born to Romana Zangone, from Calabria, and Antonio Stampone, a pasta maker from Napoli, in the middle-class San Cristóbal section of Buenos Aires...
on piano, Leopoldo Federico as second bandoneon, Horacio Malvicino on electric guitar, José Bragato
José Bragato
José Bragato is a renowned Argentine cellist, composer, conductor, arranger and musical archivist who, in his early career, was principal cellist in the Colón Theatre orchestra in Buenos Aires, Argentina...
on cello and Juan Vasallo on double bass to play tangos, and never looked back.
Upon introducing his new approach to the tango (nuevo tango), he became a controversial figure among Argentines both musically and politically. The Argentine saying "in Argentina everything may change – except the tango" suggests some of the resistance he found in his native land. However, his music gained acceptance in Europe and North America, and his reworking of the tango was embraced by some liberal segments of Argentine society, who were pushing for political changes in parallel to his musical revolution.
During the period of Argentine military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, Piazzolla lived in Italy, but returned many times to Argentina, recorded there, and on at least one occasion had lunch with the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo is a former senior commander in the Argentine Army who was the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón...
. However, his relationship with the dictator might have been less than friendly, as recounted in Ástor Piazzolla, A manera de memorias (a comprehensive collection of interviews, constituting a memoir):
In 1990 he suffered thrombosis
Thrombosis
Thrombosis is the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel, obstructing the flow of blood through the circulatory system. When a blood vessel is injured, the body uses platelets and fibrin to form a blood clot to prevent blood loss...
in Paris, and died two years later in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
.
Among his followers, his own protégé Marcelo Nisinman
Marcelo Nisinman
Marcelo Nisinman an Argentinian bandoneon player, composer and arranger.-Biography:Marcelo Nisinman studied the bandoneon with Julio Pane and composition with Guillermo Graetzer in Buenos Aries and Detlev Müller-Siemens in Basel.He has performed with Gidon Kremer, Britten Sinfonia, Gary Burton,...
is the best known innovator of the tango music of the new millennium, while Pablo Ziegler
Pablo Ziegler
Pablo Ziegler is an Argentine composer based in Buenos Aires and New York City. He is currently the leading exponent of nuevo tango, thanks to the skills and reputation he gathered while working extensively as Ástor Piazzolla's regular pianist from 1978 until the maestro's retirement for health...
, pianist with Piazzolla's second quintet, has assumed the role of principal custodian of nuevo tango, extending the jazz influence in the style. The Brazilian guitarist Sergio Assad
Sergio Assad
Sérgio Assad is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and arranger who often performs with his brother in the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad, commonly referred to as Assad Brothers or Duo Assad.-Biography:...
has also experimented with folk-derived, complex virtuoso compositions that show Piazzolla's structural influence while steering clear of tango sounds; and Osvaldo Golijov
Osvaldo Golijov
Osvaldo Noé Golijov is a Grammy award–winning composer of classical music.-Biography:Osvaldo Golijov was born in and grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family that had emigrated to Argentina in the 1920s from Romania and Russia.Golijov has developed a rich musical language, the result of...
has acknowledged Piazzolla as perhaps the greatest influence on his globally oriented, eclectic compositions for classical and klezmer performers.
Musical style
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
in its incorporation of elements of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, its use of extended harmonies and dissonance, its use of counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
, and its ventures into extended compositional forms. As Argentine psychoanalyst Carlos Kuri has pointed out, Piazzolla's fusion of tango with this wide range of other recognizable Western musical elements was so successful that it produced a new individual style transcending these influences. It is precisely this success, and individuality, that makes it hard to pin down where particular influences reside in his compositions, but some aspects are clear. The use of the passacaglia
Passacaglia
The passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century Spain and is still used by contemporary composers. It is usually of a serious character and is often, but not always, based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre....
technique of a circulating bass line and harmonic sequence, invented and much used in 17th and 18th century baroque music
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
but also central to the idea of jazz "changes", predominates in most of Piazzolla's mature compositions. Another clear reference to the baroque is the often complex and virtuosic counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
that sometimes follows strict fugal behavior but more often simply allows each performer in the group to assert his voice. A further technique that emphasises this sense of democracy and freedom among the musicians is improvisation
Improvisation
Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or...
that is borrowed from jazz in concept, but in practice involves a different vocabulary of scales and rhythms that stay within the parameters of the established tango sound-world. Pablo Ziegler
Pablo Ziegler
Pablo Ziegler is an Argentine composer based in Buenos Aires and New York City. He is currently the leading exponent of nuevo tango, thanks to the skills and reputation he gathered while working extensively as Ástor Piazzolla's regular pianist from 1978 until the maestro's retirement for health...
has been particularly responsible for developing this aspect of the style both within Piazzolla's groups and since the composer's death.
With the composition of Adiós Nonino
Adiós Nonino
Adiós Nonino is a composition by tango composer Ástor Piazzolla, written in October 1959 while in New York in memory of his father, Vicente "Nonino" Piazzolla, a few days after his father's death....
in 1959, Piazzolla established a standard structural pattern for his compositions, involving a formal pattern of fast-slow-fast-slow-coda
Coda (music)
Coda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end. Technically, it is an expanded cadence...
, with the fast sections emphasizing gritty tango rhythms and harsh, angular melodic figures, and the slower sections usually making use of the string instrument in the group and/or Piazzolla's own bandoneón
Bandoneón
The bandoneón is a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay. It plays an essential role in the orquesta típica, the tango orchestra...
as lyrical soloists. The piano tends to be used throughout as a percussive rhythmic backbone, while the electric guitar either joins in this role or spins filigree improvisations; the double bass parts are usually of little interest, but provide an indispensable rugged thickness to the sound of the ensemble. The quintet
Quintet
A quintet is a group containing five members.It is commonly associated with musical groups, such as a string quintet, or a group of five singers, but can be applied to any situation where five similar or related objects are considered a single unit....
of bandoneon, violin, piano, electric guitar and double bass was Piazzolla's preferred setup on two extended occasions during his career, and most critics consider it to be the most successful instrumentation for his works. This is due partly to its great efficiency in terms of sound – it covers or imitates most sections of a symphony orchestra, including the percussion which is improvised by all players on the bodies of their instruments – and the strong expressive identity it permits each individual musician. With a style that is both rugged and intricate, such a setup augments the compositions' inherent characteristics.
Despite the prevalence of the quintet formation and the ABABC compositional structure, Piazzolla consistently experimented with other musical forms and instrumental combinations. In 1965 an album was released containing collaborations between Piazzolla and Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
where Borges's poetry was narrated over very avant-garde music by Piazzolla including the use of dodecaphonic (twelve-tone
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
) rows, free non-melodic improvisation on all instruments, and modal
Modal
Modal may refer to:* Modal , a textile made from spun Beechwood cellulose fiber* Modal analysis, the study of the dynamic properties of structures under vibrational excitation...
harmonies and scales. In 1968 Piazzolla wrote and produced an "operita", María de Buenos Aires
María de Buenos Aires
María de Buenos Aires is a tango opera with music by Ástor Piazzolla. and libretto by Horacio Ferrer which premiered at the Sala Planeta in Buenos Aires in May 1968....
, that employed a larger ensemble including flute, percussion, multiple strings and three vocalists, and juxtaposed movements in Piazzolla's own style with several pastiche numbers ranging from waltz and hurdy-gurdy to a piano/narrator bar-room scena straight out of Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
.
By the 1970s Piazzolla was living in Rome, managed by the Italian agent Aldo Pagani, and exploring a leaner, more fluid musical style drawing on more jazz influence, and with simpler, more continuous forms. Pieces that exemplify this new direction include Libertango
Libertango
Libertango is a composition by tango composer Ástor Piazzolla, recorded and published in 1974.The title is a portmanteau merging "Libertad" and "Tango", symbolizing Piazzolla's break from Classical Tango to Tango Nuevo....
and most of the Suite Troileana, written in memory of the late Anibal Troilo. In the 1980s Piazzolla was wealthy enough, for the first time, to become relatively autonomous artistically, and wrote some of his most ambitious multi-movement works. These included Tango Suite for the virtuoso guitar duo Sergio
Sergio Assad
Sérgio Assad is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and arranger who often performs with his brother in the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad, commonly referred to as Assad Brothers or Duo Assad.-Biography:...
and Odair Assad; Histoire du Tango, where a flutist and guitarist tell the history of tango in four chunks of music styled at thirty-year intervals; and La Camorra
La Camorra
La Camorra is the name of a three-movement suite for tango ensemble composed by Ástor Piazzolla. It was inspired by the Neapolitan criminal organization Camorra and represents Piazzolla's most ambitious compositional statement in length and large-scale musical form, though not in harmony or timbre...
, a suite in three ten minute movements, inspired by the Neapolitan crime family and exploring symphonic concepts of large-scale form, thematic development, contrasts of texture and massive accumulations of ensemble sound. After making three albums in New York with the second quintet and producer Kip Hanrahan
Kip Hanrahan
Kip Hanrahan is an American jazz music impresario, record producer and percussionist.-Biography:Hanrahan was born in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in the Bronx to an Irish-Jewish family. He has an unusual role in the albums released under his name, one which he has analogized to that of a film...
, two of which he described on separate occasions as "the greatest thing I've done", he disbanded the quintet, formed a sextet with an extra bandoneon, cello, bass, electric guitar, and piano, and wrote music for this ensemble that was even more adventurous harmonically and structurally than any of his previous works (Preludio y Fuga; Sex-tet). Had he not suffered an incapacitating stroke on the way to Notre Dame mass in 1990, it is likely that he would have continued to use his popularity as a performer of his own works to experiment in relative safety with even more audacious musical techniques, while possibly responding to the surging popularity of non-Western musics by finding ways to incorporate new styles into his own. In his musical professionalism and open-minded attitude to existing styles he held the mindset of an 18th century composing performer such as Handel or Mozart, who were anxious to assimilate all national "flavors" of their day into their own compositions, and who always wrote with both first-hand performing experience and a sense of direct social relationship with their audiences. This may have resulted in a backlash amongst conservative tango aficionados in Argentina, but in the rest of the West it was the key to his extremely sympathetic reception among classical and jazz musicians, both seeing some of the best aspects of their musical practices reflected in his work.
Musical career
Piazzolla, after leaving Troilo's orchestra in the 1940s, led numerous ensembles beginning with the 1946 Orchestra, the 1955 Octeto Buenos Aires, the 1960 "First Quintet", the 1971 Conjunto 9 ("Noneto"), the 1978 "Second Quintet" and the 1989 New Tango Sextet. As well as providing original compositions and arrangements, he was the director and Bandoneon player in all of them. He also recorded the album Summit with jazz baritone saxophonistBaritone saxophone
The baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece...
Gerry Mulligan
Gerry Mulligan
Gerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also...
. His numerous compositions include orchestral work such as the "Concierto para bandoneón, orquesta, cuerdas y percusión", "Doble concierto para bandoneón y guitarra", "Tres tangos sinfónicos" and "Concierto de Nácar para 9 tanguistas y orquesta", pieces for the solo classical guitar—the Cinco Piezas (1980), as well as song-form compositions that still today are well known by the general public in his country, like "Balada para un loco" (Ballad for a madman) and Adiós Nonino
Adiós Nonino
Adiós Nonino is a composition by tango composer Ástor Piazzolla, written in October 1959 while in New York in memory of his father, Vicente "Nonino" Piazzolla, a few days after his father's death....
(dedicated to his father) which he recorded many times with different musicians and ensembles. Biographers estimate that Piazzolla wrote around 3,000 pieces and recorded around 500.
In the summer of 1985 he appeared with his Quinteto Tango Nuevo at the Almeida Theatre
Almeida Theatre
The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325 seat studio theatre with an international reputation which takes its name from the street in which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama and holds an annual summer festival of...
in London for a week-long engagement. On September 6, 1987, his quintet gave a concert in New York's Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
, which was recorded and, in 1994, released in compact disk format as The Central Park Concert. http://www.piazzolla.org/works2/thecentral.html
Discography
- Two Argentinians in Paris (with Lalo SchifrinLalo SchifrinLalo Schifrin is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations...
, 1955) - Sinfonía de Tango (Orquesta de Cuerdas, 1955)
- Adiós Nonino (1960)
- Piazzolla Interpreta A Piazzolla (Quinteto, 1961)
- Piazzolla … O No? (canta Nelly Vazquez, Quinteto, 1961)
- Nuestro Tiempo (canta Hector de Rosas, Quinteto, 1962)
- Tango Contemporáneo (Nuevo Octeto, 1963)
- Tango Para Una Cuidad (canta Héctor De Rosas, Quinteto, 1963)
- Concierto en el Philharmonic Hall de New York (Quinteto, 1965)
- El Tango. Jorge Luis Borges – Ástor Piazzolla (Orquesta and Quinteto, 1965)
- La Guardia Vieja (1966)
- La Historia del Tango. La Guardia Vieja (Orquesta, 1967)
- La Historia del Tango. Época Romántica (Orquesta, 1967)
- ION Studios (1968)
- María de Buenos Aires (Orquesta, 1968)
- Piazzolla En El Regina (Quinteto, 1970)
- Original Tangos from Argentina Vol. 1 & 2 (solo bandeneon, 1970)
- Pulsación (Orquesta, 1970)
- Piazzolla-Troilo (Dúo de Bandoneones, 1970)
- Concerto Para Quinteto (Quinteto, 1971)
- La Bicicleta Blanca, (Amelita Baltar y Orquesta, 1971)
- En Persona (recita Horacio Ferrer, Ástor Piazzolla, 1971)
- Música Popular Contemporánea de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Vol.1 & 2 (Conjunto 9, 1972)
- Roma (Conjunto 9, 1972)
- LibertangoLibertangoLibertango is a composition by tango composer Ástor Piazzolla, recorded and published in 1974.The title is a portmanteau merging "Libertad" and "Tango", symbolizing Piazzolla's break from Classical Tango to Tango Nuevo....
(Orquesta, 1974) - Piazzolla and Amelita BaltarAmelita BaltarMaría Amelia Baltar, known as Amelita Baltar is an Argentine tango singer who became famous in the early 1970s as a vocalist for composers and bandoneónists Ástor Piazzolla and Horacio Ferrer...
(1974) - Summit (Reunión Cumbre) with Gerry MulliganGerry MulliganGerald Joseph "Gerry" Mulligan was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though Mulligan is primarily known as one of the leading baritone saxophonists in jazz history – playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz – he was also...
(Orquesta, 1974) - Suite Troileana-Lumiere (Orquesta, 1975)
- Buenos Aires (1976)
- Il Pleut Sur Santiago (Orquesta, 1976)
- Piazzolla & El Conjunto Electrónico (Conjunto Electrónico, 1976)
- Piazzolla en el Olimpia de Paris (Conjunto Electrónico, 1977)
- Lo Que Vendrá (Orquesta de Cuerdas and Quinteto Nuevo Tiempo, 1979)
- Piazzolla-Goyeneche En Vivo, Teatro Regina (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1982)
- Oblivion (Orquesta, 1982)
- Suite Punta Del EsteSuite Punta Del EsteSuite Punta del Este is a tango nuevo work for orchestral strings and a bandoneón written by the Argentine composer Ástor Piazzolla in 1982. Punta del Este is an Uruguayan resort where the artist spent many summers and particularly enjoyed shark fishing....
(Quinteto, 1982) - Live in Lugano (Quinteto, 1983)
- SWF Rundfunkorchester (1983)
- Concierto de Nácar – Piazzolla en el Teatro Colón (Conjunto 9 y Orquesta Filarmónica del Teatro Colón, 1983)
- Live in Colonia (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1984)
- Montreal Jazz Festival (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1984)
- Live in Wien Vol.1 (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1984)
- Enrico IV (sound track of film Enrico IV (film)Enrico IV, 1984)
- Green Studio (1984)
- Teatro Nazionale di Milano (1984)
- El Nuevo Tango. Piazzolla y Gary BurtonGary BurtonGary Burton is an American jazz vibraphonist.A true original on the vibraphone, Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the usual two-mallets. This approach caused Burton to be heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique are widely imitated...
(Quinteto, 1986) - El Exilio de Gardel (soundtrack of film El Exilio de Gardel, Quinteto, 1986)
- Tango: Zero HourTango: Zero HourTango: Zero Hour is an album by Ástor Piazzolla. It was released in September 1986 on American Clavé, and re-released on Pangaea Records in 1988.Piazzolla considered this his greatest album...
(Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1986) - Central Park Concert (Quinteto, 1987)
- Concierto para Bandoneón – Tres Tangos with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Lalo SchifrinLalo SchifrinLalo Schifrin is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations...
(conductor), Princeton University (1987) - Sur (soundtrack of film SurSur (film)Sur is an Argentine drama film written and directed by Fernando E. Solanas. The film features Susú Pecoraro, Miguel Ángel Solá, Philippe Léotard, Lito Cruz, Ulises Dumont among others....
, Quinteto, 1988) - Luna. Live in Amsterdam (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1989)
- Lausanne Concert (Sexteto, 1989)
- Live at the BBC (1989)
- La Camorra (Quinteto Tango Nuevo, 1989)
- Hommage a Liege: Concierto para bandoneón y guitarra/Historia del Tango (1988) with Liège Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leo BrouwerLeo BrouwerJuan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida is a Cuban composer, conductor and guitarist. He is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona Casado.-Biography:...
. The concerto was performed by Piazzolla with Cacho Tirao, the Historia by Guy Lukowski and Marc Grawels. - Bandoneón Sinfónico (1990)
- The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango apasionado) (1991)
- Five Tango SensationsFive Tango SensationsFive Tango Sensations is a studio album by the Kronos Quartet and Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player Ástor Piazzolla. The record was one of a set of three internationally tinged albums released simultaneously, the Argentine music of this album being accompanied by the music of...
(Ástor Piazzolla and Kronos QuartetKronos QuartetKronos Quartet is a string quartet founded by violinist David Harrington in 1973 in Seattle, Washington. Since 1978, the quartet has been based in San Francisco, California. The longest-running combination of performers had Harrington and John Sherba on violin, Hank Dutt on viola, and Joan...
, 1991) - Original Tangos from Argentina (1992)
- Lausanne Concert (Sexteto, 1993)
- Central Park Concert 1987 (Quinteto, 1994)
- El Nuevo Tango de Buenos Aires (Quinteto, 1995)
- 57 Minutos con la Realidad (Sexteto, 1996)
- Tres Minutos con la Realidad (Sexteto, 1997)
See also
- María de Buenos AiresMaría de Buenos AiresMaría de Buenos Aires is a tango opera with music by Ástor Piazzolla. and libretto by Horacio Ferrer which premiered at the Sala Planeta in Buenos Aires in May 1968....
, a tango opera by Piazzolla - Estaciones PorteñasEstaciones PorteñasThe Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, also known as the Estaciones Porteñas or The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, are a set of four tango compositions written by Ástor Piazzolla, which were originally conceived and treated as different compositions rather than one suite, although Piazzolla performed them...
, Piazzolla’s 4 Seasons - 12 Monkeys, a movie whose soundtrack is derived and excerpted from Piazzolla's Suite Punta del Este
- Ave Maria
External links
- [ Ástor Piazzolla] in Allmusic
- Piazzolla discography
- Piazzolla.Org founded by John BuckmanJohn BuckmanJohn Buckman is founder of Magnatune, a Berkeley, California-based record label he founded in 2003 and which is known for its commercial application of Creative Commons licensing and overtly artist-friendly business practices...
Todo tango:Piazzolla Piazzolla Revolucionario Querido Ástor Piazzollazzo.com.ar E-Astoria.be (Ensemble Astoria). Astorpia.com (Astorpia Tango Quintet). - Piazzolla Sheet Music For Accordion
see also "Tangata" – the music of Astor Piazzolla...the Manny Bobenrieth Ensemble, R&L Records
Video recordings
- Fuga Y Misterio Played by Classical Jam
- Fracanapa Played by Classical Jam
- Maria de Buenos Aires Played by Astorpia Tango Quintet.
- Libertango Original version by Astor Piazzolla
- Libertango Played by Néstor Marconi and Yo-Yo MaYo-Yo MaYo-Yo Ma is an American cellist, virtuoso, and orchestral composer. He has received multiple Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts in 2001 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011...
. - Oblivion Played by Cellistanbul and Julian Lloyd WebberJulian Lloyd WebberJulian Lloyd Webber is a British solo cellist who has been described as the "doyen of British cellists".-Early life:Julian Lloyd Webber is the second son of the composer William Lloyd Webber and his wife Jean Johnstone . He is the younger brother of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber...
- Decarisimo Played by Nuevo Tango EnsambleNuevo Tango EnsambleNuevo Tango Ensamble is an Italian tango-jazz trio which was formed in 1999. The members are Pasquale Stafano who plays piano, Gianni Iorio on bandoneón and Alessandro Terlizzi on double-bass....
- Performance of Oblivion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WAclIk8Bho
- Libertango Played by Glass DuoGlass DuoGLASS DUO was founded by Anna and Arkadiusz Szafraniec. They are the only glass harp music group in Poland, one of few professional ensembles worldwide....
- Fugata Played by Nuevo Tango EnsambleNuevo Tango EnsambleNuevo Tango Ensamble is an Italian tango-jazz trio which was formed in 1999. The members are Pasquale Stafano who plays piano, Gianni Iorio on bandoneón and Alessandro Terlizzi on double-bass....
- La muerte del angel Played by Nuevo Tango EnsambleNuevo Tango EnsambleNuevo Tango Ensamble is an Italian tango-jazz trio which was formed in 1999. The members are Pasquale Stafano who plays piano, Gianni Iorio on bandoneón and Alessandro Terlizzi on double-bass....