Astor Piazzolla
Astor Pantaleon 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 the founder of the 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 Asunta Mainetti ( from the Italian province of Massa- Carrara), was four years old when his family emigrated because of the poor economic situation in Argentina to New York, where his father, a barber shop in Greenwich Village einrichtete. The musical talent of the young Astor was recognized early. In addition to piano, he also learned his father's sake, bandoneon (the father had given him in 1929 an instrument given ). About the Tango Piazzolla enthusiasm of the Father said: My father constantly heard Tango and thought wistfully back to Buenos Aires, to his family, his friends - [ ... ] only tango, tango. Piazzolla himself fascinated by jazz and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. The meetings of the nine- year-olds with the tango legend Carlos Gardel, a friend of the family, these priorities are not changed. (However, Piazzolla in the rotated in the U.S. film El día en que me quieras 1930 alongside Gardel played a small role as a newspaper boy. )
In 1937 the family returned to Buenos Aires back where a performance of tango ensembles of Elvino Vardaro a key experience for Piazzolla was: Here he experienced for the first time a novel Tango interpretation that inspired him. He practiced now expanded and perfected his bandoneon game.
In 1939 he became a member of the orchestra of Anibal Troilo, for which he also arranged pieces. An encounter with the highly esteemed by him pianist Arthur Rubinstein encouraged Piazzolla in the desire to go an academic way. From 1940 Piazzolla therefore took composition lessons with the slightly older Alberto Ginastera, already identified as a musical hope for the nation shortly after the conclusion of the Conservatory and made his first ballet and instrumental music sensation.
1944 Piazzolla left Troilo 's orchestra and worked for two years as a soloist and arranger of the orchestra of Francisco Fiorentino.
In 1946 he founded his own Orquesta Tipica, which until 1948 had stock. During this time he published under his own name the first record. In 1949, this ensemble dissolves again.
In the first half of the 50s Piazzolla composed several orchestral and chamber music works, it emerged the Rapsodia porteña (1952 ), the award-winning Symphony Buenos Aires (1953) and the Sinfonietta (1954 ), for which he was honored with the National Critics' Prize. From his early tangos from the 40s, however, he distanced himself in public, because he wanted to be taken seriously as a composer, what seemed to him with Tango at that time impossible. Although celebrated in Europe, from Paris starting, a harmless - danceable tango variant triumphs, but in Argentina, the tango had very long a bad reputation, especially among the upper classes.
1954 Piazzolla received in connection with the award for his Sinfonietta a scholarship to Europe and went to Paris to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. At the first audition he concealed that he had played and composed tangos. Piazzolla explaining his reasons as follows: In truth, I was ashamed to tell her that I was tango musicians that I had worked in brothels and cabarets of Buenos Aires. Tango musicians was a dirty word in Argentina my youth. It was the underworld. Boulanger discovered upon review of Piazzolla scores influences of Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartok and Hindemith, but missed an individual handwriting and asked Piazzolla, a tango to play on the piano. Afterwards she said Piazzolla clearly the opinion: You idiot! No Do you notice that this is the true Piazzolla, not that other one? You can continue to throw all the other music! Piazzolla took his advice, in addition, he took courses in conducting with Hermann Scherchen.
1955 returned Piazzolla returned to Argentina. He founded the Octeto Buenos Aires: two bandoneon, two violins, a bass, cello, piano and an electric guitar. The Tango Nuevo: With this ensemble, the reinterpretation of tango began.
In 1960 he founded another ensemble, a quintet of violin, guitar, piano, bass and bandoneon. Initially encountered his work to criticism and rejection, as it differed greatly from the original tango. The hostility went so far that Piazzolla and his family sometimes could hardly venture out into the street in Buenos Aires. But he continued to work and composed, concerted and created arrangements of his works for different occupations with enormous productivity.
Throughout his life, he composed over 300 tangos and music for nearly 50 films and played about 40 records a. He has worked with writers together as Jorge Luis Borges and Horacio Ferrer, the actress Jeanne Moreau, with the director Fernando Solanas and initiated and led genre -border projects, among others, 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 Tanztheater.
During the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983) Piazzolla lived in Italy, but always returned to Argentina. In 1982 he entered West Berlin at the second, dedicated to Latin America Festival Horizonte - on Festival of World Cultures. In particular, the period of 1978-1988 is the highlight of his career. During this time he worked with his second quintet, where Pablo Ziegler (piano), Fernando Suarez Paz ( violin), Horacio Malvicino (guitar) and Hector Console ( bass) participated.
In August 1990, he suffered a stroke in Paris, which made further composing impossible. He died two years later in Buenos Aires.
Work
Many of Piazzolla's tangos are not in the traditional sense danceable, but primarily music for listening. The harmony of the tango he expanded with funds from the Jazz and with the models Igor Stravinsky and Bela Bartok. Piazzolla, the playing technique of the instruments in Tango expanded by borrowing from the New Music ". Arch strokes on the violin, stabbing strings accents in a high position, glissandi of the entire ensemble, virtuoso bandoneon runs and an enrichment of occupation by a variety of percussion instruments determine his music "
Despite all the changes the essence of tango is maintained, on the one hand by the specific sound of the bandoneon, the other by the typical syncopated rhythms, the typical harmonic twists of tango, staccato and generally melancholic mood of the music. " Piazzolla dissects the characteristic elements of tango and presents them in a new light dar. Here the chordal playing of the ensemble emphasizes the obsessive rhythm, there dominates an elegiac solo passage. Sudden turning points as well as significant breakthroughs are instead of rubati of traditional tangos and emphasize more clearly than this the corte, the characteristic pause between the couple of steps. "
The essence of tango receives Piazzolla, but combines them with the academic and educated middle-class tradition of classical music. In addition to the more traditional small form of tango piece he combines tango with the great forms of music history: examples of this are the Musical drama with ballet Los amantes de Buenos Aires ( 1969), with a libretto Tango poet Horacio Ferrer ( born 1933), the oratorio El Pueblo Joven (1970) and the three-movement concerto for bandoneon, strings and percussion (1979).
Frequently Piazzolla used the shape of the Baroque suite, such as for the piece Histoire du Tango - here he gives the four sets programmatic Title: Bordel 1900, Cafe 1930, Nightclub 1960 Concert d' aujourd'hui. In Concert Las Cuatro Estaciones porteñas he attacks directly back the model of the concerts The Four Seasons (Le quattro stagioni ) by Antonio Vivaldi. It is only logical that the shape of the opera by Piazzolla is connected to tango, in which he used in the " Tango operita " María de Buenos Aires, compositional forms such as fugue and toccata and the Agnus Dei alienated to Tangus Dei. Piazzolla tango not only associated with academic tradition, but also with the light music and pop culture. Since the early 1970s, he frequently collaborated with jazz musicians and used modern instruments such as electric guitar and electric piano in his compositions.
Works (selection)
Discography (selection)
- Complete discography Spanish