Astor Piazzolla: Innovator of Nuevo Tango & El Gran Astor - Essay Sample

Astor Piazzolla is also known as Astor Pantaleon Piazzolla was a composer as well as bandoneon player from Argentine. His oeuvre reformed the traditional ballet into a novel style referred to as Nuevo tango, integrating elements from classical as well as jazz music. A brilliant bandoneonist, he habitually performed his compositions with varying ensembles, and in his land, people knew him as “El Gran Astor” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). Every person has his life history, and this paper discusses the life and work of Astor Piazzolla and his new Tango.

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In the hands of Piazzolla tango was not harshly dance music since his composition hired from the forms of jazz as well as classical forming an entire novel harmonic as well as rhythmic vocabulary that was made from for the performance hall as compared to the ballroom. Some of his diplomacies could be absolute experimental, and he did not fear the dissonance or unexpected shifts in the meter as well as tempo and he habitually composed segmented fragments with hugely complementary moods that intervallic the normal flow as well as demanded the concentration of the audience.

Piazzolla was from Argentina, and he was born in a place called Mar del Plata on 11th March 1921. His parents were not financially stable, and they had migrated from Italian and settled in the city of New York in 1924, affording him extensive acquaintance to jazz musicians such as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). His father was also involved in playing the records for Tango by the initial masters, particularly the legendary composer/vocalist Carlos Gardel, plus offer Astor a bandoneon during his 9th birthday.

Besides the instrument, Piazzolla also premeditated by Bela Wilda who was a classical pianist in 1933 hence becoming a Bach along with Rachmaninoff’s ardent fan. During this period, the nascent wonder met and at this time they frolicked with Carlos Gardel seeming like a broadsheet boy in the watershed tango film of Gardel (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). Piazzolla at his teenage, he decided to accompany Gardel in 1935 to visit South Africa, and this decision made him involved in the disastrous plane bang that claimed the life of Gardel.

Piazzolla won a studentship in 1954 to go for further studies in Paris, and Nadia Boulanger hugely influenced him, and he encouraged him not to disregard tango. Nevertheless, he encouraged Piazzolla to bolster the arrangement with his jazz as well as classical training. In 1955 he returned home and introduced the tango world immediately. He formed an octet that used to play tango as self-contained compartment music instead of vocalists or dancers’ accompaniment. The protest howls from fundamentalist continued to lead until 1958, and at this time, Piazzolla parted the cluster and moved to the city on New York (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). In the city, he operated as an experimented and arranger with jazz as well as tango fusion, also constituting the renowned “Adios Nonino” which was a lovely rhyme to his father.

In 1960, when he returned to Buenos Aires, he formed his initial quintet, and this became his influencer for the vision. During this period, he experimented as well as refined heavily to push the tango structure to reach its breaking point. Despite composing songs, he also flexed his muscle recording several films of that season. His new tango was different from the outdated tango in its amalgamation of jazz elements (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). Also, the way it used the extended harmonies, as well as dissonance, its counterpoint use, as well as its ventures into protracted compositional forms, was different. He introduced novel instruments, which were never used in the outmoded tango, comprising electric guitar, the flute, electronic instruments, saxophone, as well as a rock or jazz drum kit.

Reference

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2020, June 30). Astor Piazzolla. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Astor-Piazzolla.