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New vs. Traditional Tango

Posted by DCA Theater on August 2, 2011 in Other, Summer Opera

The tango music of Maria de Buenos Aires is different from the standard tango music that is usually associated with the tango dance.
To get a feel for the differences, we have included here an even shorter “Brief Introduction to the History of Tango Music”, condensed from the article by Christine Denniston. At the end of the article, we have included a sound clip of traditional tango music, as well as a video performance of music from Maria de Buenos Aires and additional links for more information.

Astor Piazzolla and his bandoneon, a large button accordion noted for its unwieldy size and difficult fingering system.

“Brief Introduction to the History of Tango Music”, condensed from the article by Christine Denniston.

The earliest evidence of ‘tangos’ being sung on stage in Buenos Aires comes from the mid 19th century (though if we could hear them today, we probably wouldn’t recognize them as what we would call Tango). Tango bands at that time would often be made up of flute, violin and guitar, or tangos might be played on a solo piano in the brothels and cabarets.

Around the turn of the [19th] Century massive European immigration brought huge numbers of Italians to Buenos Aires, a great many of them from Naples. They brought with them a more lyrical style of violin playing, and the melodic influence of Neapolitan song, a key factor in the melodic beauty characteristic of Tango.

Soon afterwards, probably around 1910, the bandoneón, the emblematic instrument of the Tango, arrived in Buenos Aires, perhaps brought by German immigrants or sailors. The bandoneón was invented, probably in Germany, possibly in France, and produced in Germany, as a cheap substitute for a church organ in poorer communities.

A driving force in the development of Tango music had always been the dance, and around this time it was the dance that introduced the music to the world. Young men of good Argentine families (and Argentina was one of the richest countries in the world) would be sent to Europe to study, or to do the Grand Tour. Some of these young men, not surprisingly, had spent many happy hours in the brothels, clubs and places of ill repute in Buenos Aires, where they had learned to dance the Tango. Polite society in Paris saw the dance for the first time and fell in love, and very soon the whole of Europe was whipped by a furious Tangomania. 1913 was the year of the Tango. The impact back in Buenos Aires was profound. To the elite, Tango had been something that they chose not to associate themselves with, in public at least. Now Tango could move from the tradesman’s entrance to the front door, and into the salons of the wealthy.

In 1950 a brilliant young bandoneonista called Astor Piazzolla left Buenos Aires to go to Paris to study classical composition with Nadia Boulanger. Although born in Argentina, he had been taken to the United States as a small child. He came to Buenos Aires as a teenager and began playing in the orchestra of Anibal Troilo, doing there some wonderful arrangements, before forming his own orchestra in 1946. Surrounded by such musical riches, he realized that it would be hard to have the success that he wanted by staying within the Tango tradition. Taking elements of Tango, elements of the Jazz that he had heard as a child in the States, and classical ideas, Piazzolla created what he called Tango Nuevo, New Tango. Determined that his music should be listened to rather than danced to, Piazzolla made the jazzy rhythms very different from what the dancers were expecting.

When Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo was first heard in Buenos Aires it caused outrage, with many people saying that it so far from the tradition as not to be Tango at all. But the cross fertilization with North American and European forms created something accessible and appealing to people not brought up with the Tango tradition, and Piazzolla’s huge success in the rest of the world softened opinion at home. Musicians and stage dancers both found the freer rhythms appealing, and with the near disappearance of the social dancers, new Tango music mostly followed Piazzolla’s lead.

Click here to read the full article by Christine Denniston.

Click here for more information from History-of-Tango.com.

Click here for a pictorial history of Tango from AmstelTango school.

TRADITIONAL TANGO MUSIC:

In 1916 Roberto Firpo, pianist, heard a march by a young Uruguayan called Gerardo Mattos Rodriguez, and decided to arrange it as a tango. The result was one of the most famous tango of all time, La Cumparsita.
Click here to listen to La Cumparsita on Wikipedia.

PIAZZOLLA’S NUEVO TANGO MUSIC:

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. Often it is associated with concert halls instead of dance halls due to the halting tempos and complex rhythms.