Astor Piazzola
Biographical Information
Summary:
Back in the late 1980’s, Astor Piazzolla, the famous Argentinian composer, was on his way to the Buenos Aires Airport. You wouldn’t expect a trip to the airport to be dramatic. But on this trip, Piazzolla had to switch taxis because the first driver recognized him and started screaming at him for “desecrating" the tango. Thankfully, the driver didn’t start a fist fight like other “critics” did. Despite the negative reactions from some critics, many Argentinians think of Piazzolla as a national icon. A couple of years earlier, he was given the honorary title, “Citizen of Buenos Aires.” The mayor of Buenos Aires gave Piazzolla this award because his career as a composer gave the tango a new, world-wide reputation. So, was Piazzolla a national hero or a tango heretic? In a way, the controversy speaks for itself. Pioneers, trend-setters, and groundbreaking leaders have a habit of being controversial. Piazzolla was all three of these things. He blurred the barriers between genres and reinvented the tango with jazz, classical, and 20th century musical influences. His cutting-edge musical style, known as Nuevo Tango (new tango), made him one of the most popular and well-respected composers in the world. In one 1989 interview Piazzolla said, “I learned a lot of music, and I thought the best thing to do was to put my musical knowledge into tango. So I did it, and got into a lot of trouble…. But I didn’t modify the tango; I modified the music of the tango. The tango is a rhythm, and I respected the rhythm, but I put in new melodies and new harmonies.”
Early Life and Origins:
Astor Piazzolla was born in Argentina in 1921, but his family moved to New York City when he was very young. He started playing the bandoneon when he was only 9 years old. The bandoneon is a popular instrument in Argentina and an important part of tango music. It’s similar to an accordion, but it was originally created in Germany for churches that didn’t have an organ. So the bandoneon might move and look like an accordion, but it also has the complexity of a pipe organ. The young Piazzolla was a prodigy. He started playing works by Bach, Mozart, and Schumann on his bandoneon, sometimes for 6 hours a day. However, the young Piazzolla was also fascinated with the music of Duke Ellington, and Gershwin. When he was in his early teens, he would take the subway to Harlem and listen to jazz greats like Cab Calloway at the famous Cotton Club. He described this experience by saying, “I heard Cab Calloway, and that went into me as if he had stabbed me with his music. I loved it! Music is like that. You have to fall in love.” Piazzolla also started playing tango music when he was a teenager. After years of listening to his father’s tango records, he was invited to accompany the famous Argentinian singer, Carlos Gardel.
Career and Legacy:
The Tango was created in the 1890’s. It was music that was meant for dancing and the tango’s distinctive rhythms can be traced back to Black communities in Argentina and Latin-America. But the tango also has musical influences from Andalusia in Spain, native Argentina, and other places. Like jazz in the United States, the tango was at first rejected by the mainstream. However, the tango scene was thriving in downtown Buenos Aires by the time that Piazzolla returned to Argentina in 1937. Piazzolla performed in this vibrant setting, and drew attention to himself by performing Rhapsody in Blue and other non-traditional music on his bandoneon. This brought him both fame and notoriety. It also peaked the interest of another famous composer, Alberto Ginastera.
Piazzolla would study with Ginastera, and was also hired as a musical arranger for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic. He eventually won a composer’s competition that allowed him to study with Nadia Boulanger, the famous composer and teacher, in Paris. She taught George Walker, Aaron Copland, and Philip Glass; and was probably the most prolific composition teacher in the twentieth century. Piazzolla developed as a composer and learned about modern composition. But he also discovered something much more profound. In the same 1989 interview from earlier, Piazzolla said, “I studied with her (Nadia Boulanger) for 18 months, and I found something with her: Myself. She was analyzing the concert music I’d written, and she said, ‘This is wonderful, but something’s missing. Where is Astor Piazzolla? I can’t find him.’ All of a sudden, she made me play one of my tangos on the piano. Then she took my hands and said, ‘This is Astor Piazzolla. Don’t ever leave it.’”
Piazzolla returned to Argentina and flourished as a composer with his Nuevo Tango style. His music would spread around the world like wildfire, and it would eventually find popularity in Argentina, despite the protest of tango purists. He composed over 750 pieces, and would work with almost every major orchestra possible. His music is so grabbing that some of his biggest fans are people like Sting, the drummer from Grateful Dead, and the band: U2.
Resources
Goertzen, Chris, and María Susana Azzi. “Globalization and the Tango.” Yearbook for
Traditional Music, vol. 31, 1999, pp. 67–76. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/767974.
Accessed 6 Apr. 2024.
San Diego Tribune Article:
Britannica:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Astor-Piazzolla
Video: Piazzolla describes Bandoneon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x30YkkYX9Eo
Video: Bandoneon playing Bach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES3sbXY4gPk
