Sucesos Semanales

As we said before, 80 years ago, more precisely on March 11^th, 1921, Astor Pantaleón Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata, the son of an italian marriage formed by Vicente ¨Nonino¨ Piazzolla and Asunta Manetti. In 1924 the Piazzolla family migrated to New York, where they stayed until 1937. Astor`s passion for music began in his first years. To encourage that passion, his father gave him a ¨bandoneón¨ when he was only eight years old and made him take lessons with an italian teacher who taught him the first steps in the interpretation of the instrument. In his musical beginning the idea of devoting himself to tango was very strange, since all of his attention was focused on jazz music. But ¨Nonino¨ did not want his son to iniciate in that kind of music, and that was the cause of several family quarrels.
There is an anecdote which tells that Astor named his first tango ¨Paso a paso hacia la 42¨ (¨Step by step to the 42^nd¨) and his father made him rename it ¨La Catinga¨ because he thought it was more popular.
When he was still undecided about dedicating to tango, something happened that made him take the decision: a meeting with Gardel. Astor participated in the film ¨El día que me quieras¨, where he played a newspaper seller. Besides he was involved in the film as a musician, since he took part in the soundtrack orchestra.
Since then, Tango would become his emblem and Astor would take a new path.
Back in our country he was a part of Alberto Webb`s orchestra in his hometown, Mar del Plata, until 1939 when he arrived in Buenos Aires. From that moment on, his career began to grow. He participated in Miguel Caló and Gabriel Clausi´s orchestras and formed a ¨bandoneón¨ duet with Calisto Sayago. He also had a brief experience in the ¨Trío Melodía¨ (¨Melody Threesome¨) directed by Ernesto de la Cruz, and in the Francisco Lauró´s orchestra. In 1939 he received an offering to be a stand-in in Troilo´s orchestra, because of a health condition of one of his musicians. This replacement experience lasted little longer than five years, during which he even did some musical arrangements for Pichuco´s orchestra. Even though he was very young (he was 23 years old) ¨El Gato¨, as his director had named him, had very precise ideas about what he wanted for tango, so his arrengements sounded according to those ideas. But the audience didn´t like these new ideas, so Pichuco had to interfere in Astor´s arrangements. That was the reason why Piazzolla left Troilo´s orchestra to make his own history. He then organized an orchestra to play with Francisco Fiorentino and, in 1946, he began directing his own one. He made music for films, and some arrangements for directors with whom he related to, such as Caló, Basso and Francini-Pontier. In 1954 he got a scholarship to study in France with Nadia Boulanger. While he was there he discovered that ¨Prepárense¨ (¨Get ready¨) was a real success, but he was still reluctant about his return to Tango, return that we still have to thank to Boulanger, who convinced him not to deny his natural talent, since it would be the biggest mistake he would ever made; and besides, she thought that his audience deserved to have the legacy of his work.
In 1956, he came back to Buenos Aires and organized the ¨Orquesta de Cuerdas¨ (¨Strings orchestra¨) and the ¨Octeto de Buenos Aires¨ (¨Buenos Aires octet¨) which won him the Fabián Sevitzky contest. This contest took place in the Buenos Aires Law Faculty, and left him with two different results: he won the admiration of the general audience, but, on the other hand, he experienced the reject of tradicional tango lovers, who couldn´t accept his music to be Tango. Between 1958 and 1960, he took his tango-jazz show to the United States, but he wasn´t well received there. However, it was during this period that he wrote one of his bests songs: ¨Adiós Nonino¨, as a homage to his late father. Back in Argentina he formed his famous quintet. Elvino Vardaro, Antonio Agri, Horacio Malvicino, Oscar López Ruiz, Kicho Díaz, Osvaldo Manzi and Cacho Tirao, all prestigious musicians, were some of the people involved in this project. P iazzolla worked with them because of their virtuous technicism and because they had the same ideas he had about Tango. In 1965 he released an album called “El tango” (“The tango”) where he associated his work with the work of the writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Three years later he began working with Horacio Ferrer, one of the most important contemporary poets, and their first work together was “María de Buenos Aires” (“María of Buenos Aires”). It was in 1969 when they reached unsuspected levels of popularity with the beautiful song “Balada para un loco” (“Ballad for a crazy man”), first sang by Amelita Baltar.
In 1972 he was convoked to compose the soundtrack of the film “Ultimo tango en París” (“Last tango in Paris”) but since he was doing rehearsals for his presentation in the “Teatro Colón” he wrote only two songs: “Jeanne y Paul” (“Jeanne and Paul”) and “El penúltimo” (“One before the last one”).
Piazzolla spent his last years touring around the world and being recognized as the Best Argentine Musician of the Century. He gave tango new sounds, and tango did not give an artist of his dimensions again. Since he formed the “Octeto Buenos Aires” in 1958 he was rejected by tradicionalists who couldn´t understand his phrasings and mozartians harmonies. He divided tango lovers between the ones who admired him and the ones who didn´t think of him as a tango player, but no one ever failed to recognize his musical talent. We have, as an example, his descriptive tangos, such as “Adiós Nonino” or “Verano Porteño”, and this is just a little part of all of his works, which are a lot. If we had to name all of his songs, we would need an entire section, that is why we decided not to put them in this homage, but you have to believe us when we say that there is no waste between them.
During one of his endless tours around Europe, more precisely while he was in Paris, he was cruelly attacked by a brain thrombosis and had to be urgently moved to Buenos Aires. He struggled against his illness for two years, during which all the Argentine people kept his eyes on him, waiting for his recovery. Sadly, on July 4^th 1992, he passed away. The whole country cried for him: he was an ambassador, he was a genius, he created controversy, but, above all, he was the one who gave tango a turning point and made it eternal, emotional and recognized all around the world.


In one of his most remembered thoughts historian Horacio Salas expresses his feelings better than anyone: “I´m sick and tired of everyone telling me that my music is not tango. I tell them (since I am tired) that my music is Buenos Aires music, if they like. But, how do you call Buenos Aires music? Tango. So, my music is Tango” (Astor Piazzolla, 1963)