The Music of Astor Piazzolla
Below is the recording of the hybrid monthly meeting
The UWC April luncheon will be a presentation by Maria Susana Azzi, a cultural anthropologist. She will explore the music of Astor Piazzolla, in its musical and cultural context.
The tango is a complex popular genre that involves dance, music, poetry, philosophy, narrative and drama. It also joins African, American and European cultural and aesthetic elements. In the study of the tango we find one key to understanding the essential fabric of Argentine society: a melting pot. Argentina was the second largest recipient of immigration between 1821 and 1932, the United States of America being the first, and Canada the third. The tango was soon to become the national music of Argentina, a metaphor and a metonimy, a shaper of identities, an umbrella for diverse sonorities and plural vocalities, and the expression of a profound emotional repertoire.
Astor Piazzolla (1921-92), was a classically trained composer of modern tangos, whose music reflected and inspired the deepest of feelings. He often said he had three teachers: Alberto Ginastera, Nadia Boulanger, and Buenos Aires. Although Piazzolla retained the tango’s essential spirit, he wrote tango for listeners, and he introduced dissonance, chromatic harmony and a wider range of rhythm. His music, too complex for most conservative tangueros, was strongly resisted by the purists. The story was that in the 1950s when Piazzolla was conducting a symphony, an Italian musician in the orchestra asked him, “I assume you have nothing to do with this Piazzolla who plays tangos?”
Nevertheless, the audience for Piazzolla’s work is wide, and includes, classical music lovers, jazz fans and even rock musicians. His compositions combine elements from jazz, the tango, and classical music, mainly Bartók and Stravinsky. Piazzolla achieved a rare symbiosis between composed and improvised elements which gives his music distinct individuality and appeal.
To see María Susana Azzi's Resumé click here.
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