Astor Piazzolla

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Astor Piazzolla (1971)

Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla (born March 11, 1921 in Mar del Plata , † July 4, 1992 in Buenos Aires ) was an Argentine bandoneon player and composer. He is considered to be the founder of Tango Nuevo , a further development of the traditional Tango Argentino .

Life

Astor Piazzolla, the only child of Vicente "Nonino" Piazzolla (from Trani in Italy) and Assunta Mainetti (from the Italian province of Massa-Carrara ), was four years old when his family emigrated to New York because of the poor economic situation in Argentina . where his father set up a hair salon in Greenwich Village . The young Astor's musical talent was recognized early on. In addition to the piano, he also learned to play the bandoneon, for his father's sake (his father had given him an instrument in 1929). About his father's enthusiasm for tango, Piazzolla said: My father kept listening to tango and wistfully thought back to Buenos Aires, his family, his friends - [...] always only tango, tango. Piazzolla himself was enthusiastic about jazz and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach . The nine-year-old's encounters with the tango legend Carlos Gardel , a friend of the family, did not change these priorities either. (However, Piazzolla played a small role as a newspaper boy alongside Gardel in the film El día en que me quieras, shot in the USA in 1935.)

In 1937 the family returned to Buenos Aires, where a performance by Elvino Vardaro's tango ensemble became a key experience for Piazzolla: it was here that he first experienced a new kind of tango interpretation that delighted him. He now practiced and perfected his bandoneon playing.

In 1939 he became a member of Aníbal Troilo's orchestra , for which he also arranged pieces. An encounter with the pianist Artur Rubinstein , whom he greatly admired, confirmed Piazzolla's desire to pursue an academic path. From 1940 onwards, Piazzolla took composition lessons from Alberto Ginastera , who was only a little older and , shortly after graduating from the conservatory, was considered the nation's musical hope and caused a sensation with his first ballet and instrumental works.

In 1944, Piazzolla left the Troilo orchestra and initially worked for two years as a soloist and arranger in the Francisco Fiorentino orchestra.

In 1946 he founded his first own Orquesta Típica, which lasted until 1948. During this time he published the first records under his name. In 1949 this ensemble dissolved again.

In the first half of the 1950s Piazzolla composed a number of orchestral and chamber music works, including the Rapsodía porteña (1952), the award-winning Symphony Buenos Aires (1953) and the Sinfonietta (1954), for which he was honored with the national critic's award. On the other hand, he distanced himself in public from his early tangos from the 1940s, because he wanted to be taken seriously as a composer, which seemed impossible to him with tango at that time. Although a harmless, danceable tango variant celebrated triumphs in Europe, starting from Paris, tango had a bad reputation for a long time in Argentina, especially among the upper class.

In 1954, in connection with the prize for his Sinfonietta , Piazzolla received a scholarship for Europe and went to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger . During the first audition, he did not mention that he had played and composed tangos. Piazzolla explained his reasons as follows: In truth, I was ashamed to tell her that I was a tango musician, that I had worked in brothels and cabarets in Buenos Aires. Tango musician was a dirty word in my youth in Argentina. It was the underworld. While looking through Piazzolla's scores, Boulanger discovered influences from Ravel , Stravinsky , Bartók and Hindemith , but missed an individual handwriting and asked Piazzolla to play a tango on the piano. Afterwards she clearly told Piazzolla: You idiot! Don't you notice that this is the real Piazzolla, not that other one? You can throw away all of the other music! Piazzolla accepted the advice, and he also took conducting courses with Hermann Scherchen .

In 1955, Piazzolla returned to Argentina. He founded the Octeto Buenos Aires : two bandoneons, two violins, a bass, cello, piano and an electric guitar. It was with this ensemble that the reinterpretation of tango began: Tango Nuevo .

In 1960 he founded another ensemble, a quintet consisting of violin, guitar, piano, bass and bandoneon. Initially, his works met with criticism and rejection because they differed greatly from the original tango. The hostility went so far that Piazzolla and his family could barely venture out into the streets in Buenos Aires. But he continued to work and composed, performed and created arrangements of his works for different ensembles with enormous productivity.

In the course of his life he composed over 300 tangos and music for almost 50 films and made around 40 records. He worked with writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Horacio Ferrer , with the actress Jeanne Moreau , with the director Fernando Solanas and initiated and led cross-genre projects, including with the Kronos Quartet and with jazz musicians such as Gary Burton and Gerry Mulligan . He also wrote the music for the ballet Bandoneón for Pina Bausch's dance theater . In 1975 he founded the Octeto Electrónico , in which his son Daniel also played.

During the Argentine military dictatorship (1976–1983), Piazzolla lived in Italy , but kept returning to Argentina. In particular, the period from 1978 to 1988 is considered the high point of his work. During this time he worked with his second quintet, in which Pablo Ziegler (piano), Fernando Suarez Paz (violin), Horacio Malvicino (guitar) and Hector Console (double bass) played.

In August 1990 he suffered a stroke in Paris, which made further composing impossible. He died two years later in Buenos Aires.

plant

Many of Piazzolla's tangos are no longer danceable in the traditional sense, but primarily music to listen to. He expanded the harmony of tango with the means of jazz and based on the models Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók . Piazzolla has expanded the playing technique of the instruments in tango by borrowing from new music: "Bows on the violin, piercing string accents in high register, glissandi of the entire ensemble, virtuoso bandoneons and an enrichment of the line-up with a variety of percussion instruments determine his music."

Despite all the innovations, the essence of tango is retained, on the one hand by the specific sound of the bandoneon, on the other hand by the typical syncopated rhythms, the typical harmonic turns of tango, staccati and the generally melancholy mood of the music. “Piazzolla dissects the characteristic elements of tango and presents them in a new light. Here the chordal play of the ensemble obsessively emphasizes the rhythm, there an elegiac solo passage dominates. Sudden caesuras as well as clear breaks take the place of the rubati of traditional tango and emphasize more clearly than these the corte , the characteristic pause of the couple between the steps. "

Piazzolla preserves the essence of tango, but combines it with the academic and educated tradition of classical music. In addition to the rather traditional small form of the tango piece, he combines tango with the major forms of music history: Examples are the musical drama with ballet Los amantes de Buenos Aires (1969) based on a libretto by the tango poet Horacio Ferrer (* 1933), the oratorio El Pueblo Joven (1970) and the three-movement concerto for bandoneon, strings and percussion (1979).

Piazzolla often uses the form of the baroque suite , for example for the piece Histoire du Tango - here he gives the four movements programmatic titles: Bordel 1900 , Café 1930 , Night Club 1960 , Concert d'aujourd'hui . In the concert Las Cuatro Estaciones porteñas , he draws directly on the model of the concerts The Four Seasons ( Le quattro stagioni ) by Antonio Vivaldi . It is only logical that the form of the opera by Piazzolla is also combined with tango, in the "Tango-Operita" María de Buenos Aires , in which he uses compositional forms such as fugue and toccata and alienates the Agnus Dei to Tangus Dei . Piazzolla, however, connected tango not only with academic tradition, but also with popular music and pop culture. Since the early 1970s he has often worked with jazz musicians and used modern instruments such as electric bass, drums, electric guitar and electric piano in his compositions.

Awards and honors

Works (selection)

Artistic adaptation: Hetty Krist , Astor Piazzolla (color lithograph)
  • 1943: Suite para cuerdas y arpas
  • 1946: El desbande
  • 1952: Rapsodía porteña
  • 1953: Buenos Aires
  • 1954: Sinfonietta
  • 1959: Adiós Nonino
  • 1963: Tres tangos sinfonicos
  • 1969: Balada para un loco
  • 1968: María de Buenos Aires
  • 1970: El pueblo joven
  • 1972: Oblivion
  • 1973: Libertango
  • 1975: Suite Troileana
  • 1976: 500 motivaciones
  • 1979: Concierto para bandoneón
  • 1982: Le grand tango
  • 1986: El exilio de Gardel

Discography (selection)

Own recordings

  • 1974: Libertango. ( Polydor / Tropical Music 68.904)
  • 1974: Summit with Gerry Mulligan (Tropical Music 68.842)
  • 1975: Lumiere. (Tropical Music 68,942)
  • 1977: Persecuta. (Tropical Music 68,943)
  • 1979: Biyuya. (Tropical Music 68,943)
  • 1986: Tango: Zero Hour. (American Clavé / Intuition 1013)
  • 1987: The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango apasionado). (American Clavé / Intuition 1019 2)
  • 1989: La Camorra. (American Clavé / Intuition 1021 2)
  • 1992: Luna. (Hemisphere / EMI 7 243 8 35595 2 7)
  • 1996: 57 minutes con la realidad. (American Clavé / Intuition 30792)

Recordings by other artists

  • 1989: Mario Raskin and Oscar Milani : Tangos for 2 harpsichords, Vol. 1 (Disques Pierre Verany PV 789102)
  • 1996: Roberto Aussel u. a .: Las Músicas de Astor Piazzolla - The Spirit of Buenos Aires (Mandala 4903)
  • 1996: Gidon Kremer u. a .: Hommage à Piazzolla (Nonesuch / East West 7559-79407-2)
  • 1996: Daniel Barenboim u. a .: Wed Buenos Aires querido (Teldec / Warner B000000S97)
  • 1996: Di Meola Plays Piazzolla (Mesa / Bluemoon B000002JXC)
  • 1997: Gidon Kremer and The Astor Quartet: El Tango. (Nonesuch / East West 7559-79462-2)
  • 1997: Yo-Yo Ma : Soul of the Tango (Sony SK 63122)
  • 1998: Gidon Kremer, Kremerata Baltica u. a .: María de Buenos Aires (Teldec / East West 3984-20632-2)
  • 2000: Mario Raskin and Oscar Milani: Tangos for 2 harpsichords, Vol. 2 (Disques Pierre Verany PV 703032)
  • 2001: Feidman Plays Piazzolla (Wsm / Warner B00007BKL7)
  • 2004: Richard Galliano , Usa: Piazzolla Forever
  • 2008: Jan Vogler , Moritzburg Festival Ensemble: Tango! (Sony / BMG B001AMCF3M)
  • 2008: E. and J. Kutrowatz , piano, A. Mühldorfer, percussion, "Tango Nuevo" (Organum, Ogm 281034)

Filmography (selection)

  • 1959: The rival (Le conquérant solitaire)
  • 1973: All nudity is punished (Toda Nudez Será Castigada)
  • 1975: It rains over Santiago (Il pleut sur Santiago)
  • 1976: The Blackmailer (Armaguedon)
  • 1976: In the spotlight (Lumière)
  • 1977: Raid at dawn (Quand la ville s'éveille)
  • 1980: Tango through Germany
  • 1982: At the north bridge (Le pont du nord)
  • 1982: Neon City
  • 1982: return (Volver)
  • 1983: Bella Donna
  • 1984: Heinrich IV. (Enrico IV)
  • 1985: Tangos (El exilio de Gardel: Tangos)
  • 1985: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
  • 1985 The callboy
  • 1988: South - Sur (Sur)
  • 1989: I only have your love
  • 1991: the tango player
  • 1992: The Journey (El viaje)
  • 1995: Under the Milky Way

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Portrait at Matices ( Memento of the original from November 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.matices.de
  2. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 81059

swell

  • Maria S. Azzi: A Grand Tango. The Life and Music of Astor Piazzolla. University Press, Oxford, 2000, ISBN 0-19-512777-3 .
  • Natalio Gorin: Astor Piazzolla. Metro-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-928282-09-3 .
  • Mike Dibb: Astor Piazzolla in portrait. Opus Production, Paris 2005 (1 DVD with booklet).
  • Christina and Martin Höfferer: “ The snake charmer. Astor Piazzolla “ORF radio documentary 2013 (55 minutes).

Web links

Commons : Astor Piazzolla  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Piazzolla, Astor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piazzolla, Astor Pantaleón (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Argentine tango musician, bandoneon player and composer
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Mar del Plata , Argentina
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1992
Place of death Buenos Aires , Argentina