Astor Piazzolla

Overview

Biography

Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992) was an Argentine composer and bandoneón player who transformed the traditional tango into a serious art form by fusing it with jazz harmony and classical counterpoint. Born in Mar del Plata, he spent his childhood in New York, where his father had him study the bandoneón — a German-origin concertina central to tango — and where he encountered jazz firsthand. Back in Buenos Aires, he played in traditional tango orchestras before travelling to Paris in 1954 to study composition with Nadia Boulanger.

It was Boulanger who, famously, heard Piazzolla play one of his own tango pieces and told him that this was where his true voice lay — not in the classical pastiche he had been writing. Returning to Argentina, he formed the Octeto Buenos Aires and began creating what he called "nuevo tango" — tango for listening rather than dancing, with dissonant harmonies, contrapuntal textures, and the energy of jazz improvisation woven through the dance's fundamental rhythms and melancholy.

The response from tango purists was hostile; death threats were not uncommon, and radio stations refused to play his music. But audiences outside Argentina embraced him. His international breakthrough came in the 1970s and 80s, and by the time of his death his status as the greatest Argentine composer and one of the most important figures in twentieth-century music was secure. Libertango (1974) has become one of the most covered instrumental pieces in the world; Adiós Nonino, written in grief at his father's death, is considered his masterpiece.