Camelia Blanca: A day with the flower of South American Music

Composer(s)

Alberto Ginastera (b Buenos Aires, 11 April 1916; dGeneva, 25 June 1983). Argentine composer. His original creative achievement established his position as one of the leading 20th-century composers of the Americas.

Aníbal Troilo (b Buenos Aires, 11 July 1914; d Buenos Aires, 18 May 1975). Argentine tango bandoneon player, bandleader and composer. Largely self-taught, he played full-time in tango bands from the age of 13, working in those of Juan Maglio, the Vardaro-Pugliese Sextet, Julio De Caro and Alfredo Gobbi among others. His own band made its début at the Marabú cabaret in Buenos Aires in July 1937. With Troilo’s bandoneon and the piano skills of Orlando Goñi, it was soon recognized as the leading band of its time; the first of its nearly 500 recordings date from 1938. Supremely popular in Buenos Aires, Troilo made relatively few trips abroad, which were always short. His best tango songs were written with the lyricist Homero Manzi, and include Barrio de tango and Sur, the prime tango classics of the 1940s. In 1953 he wrote music for a long-running musical comedy, El patio de la morocha, and he and his musicians appeared in eight Argentine films. From the 1950s to the end of his life Troilo also worked with excellent smaller groups, the Troilo-Grela Quartet (with guitarrist Roberto Grela) and his own Aníbal Troilo Quartet. The records he made with these groups, especially the album Troilo-Grela (1963), display magnificently his bandoneon technique, above all his astonishing sensitivity and his equal skill with both hands. Troilo’s affection for strenuous night life and his taste for whisky gradually undermined his health, but he never lost his status as a popular idol, shown in the public grief occasioned by his death.

Astor Piazzolla: (b Mar del Plata, 11 March 1921; d Buenos Aires, 5 July 1992). Argentine composer, bandleader and bandoneón player. A child prodigy on the bandoneón, Piazzolla and his family emigrated to New York in 1924; in his teens he became acquainted with Gardel, for whom he worked as a tour guide, translator and occasional performer. Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires in 1937 where he gave concerts and made tango arrangements for Aníbal Troilo, a leading bandleader; he also studied classical music with Ginastera. In 1944 Piazzolla left Troilo’s band to form the Orquesta del 46 as a vehicle for his own compositions. A symphony composed in 1954 for the Buenos Aires PO won him a scholarship to study in Paris with Boulanger, who encouraged him in the composition of tangos; the following year he resettled in Argentina and formed the Octeto Buenos Aires and, later, the Quinteto Nuevo Tango, which performed at his own club, Jamaica. Piazzolla left Argentina in 1974, settling in Paris, where he composed a concerto for bandoneón and a cello sonata for Rostropovich, among other works.
Piazzolla’s distinctive brand of tango, later called ‘nuevo tango’, initially met with resistance. Including fugue, extreme chromaticism, dissonance, elements of jazz and, at times, expanded instrumentation, it was condemned by the old-guard, including not only most tango composers and bandleaders but also Borges, whose short story El hombre de la Esquina Rosada was the basis for Piazzolla’s El tango (1969); like tango itself, Piazzolla’s work first found general approval outside Argentina, principally in France and the USA. By the 1980s, however, Piazzolla’s music was widely accepted even in his native country, where he was now seen as the saviour of tango, which during the 1950s and 60s had declined in popularity and appeal. In the late 1980s Piazzolla’s works began to be taken up by classical performers, in particular the Kronos Quartet, who commissioned Five Tango Sensations (1989). In all he composed about 750 works, including film scores for Tangos: the Exile of Gardel (1985) and Sur (1987). Shortly before his death, he was commissioned to write an opera on the life of Gardel.

(b ?Toulouse, Dec 1890; d Medellín, 24 June 1935). Argentine composer and tango singer. Although Gardel's origins have been widely debated, he was probably born in Toulouse in 1890; in 1893 he and his mother emigrated to Buenos Aires. Together with the Uruguayan singer José Razzano, he formed a duo in 1911, which lasted until 1925. About 1917 Gardel performed and recorded Samuel Castriota's popular tango tune Lita, under the title Mi noche triste (to words by Pascual Contursi). By the early 1920s he was firmly established as Argentina's leading tango singer, and several successful European tours followed. He was killed in a plane crash in 1935.

Gardel's chief contribution was to popularize the sung tango, although both his career and songs were criticized by some as lacking a critical, political thrust. In addition to recording almost 900 songs, he appeared in several classic films; his best-known compositions include El día que me quieras, Mi Buenos Aires querido, Por una cabeza, Volver, Silencio and Cuesta abajo. Gardel's impact was profound: a product of the arrabal (districts) who came to symbolize the fulfilment of the dreams of the Argentine porteño (from the port, i.e. Buenos Aires), he remains a crucial figure, ‘the tango made flesh’ as described by the singer Libertad Lamarque.

(b Campinas, 11 July 1836; d Belém, 16 Sept 1896). Brazilian composer. He was the son of a provincial bandmaster, from whom he learnt the rudiments of music and to play several instruments. He began composing at an early age and at 18 wrote a mass that was performed in a local church by the Gomes family ensemble. In 1859 he went on a concert tour with his brother Sant’Ana Gomes and had considerable success with his Hino acadêmico in São Paulo. He then left for Rio de Janeiro against his father’s will and entered the Imperial Conservatory of Music, where he studied composition under Joaquim Giannini.

Egberto Gismonti: (b Carmo, 5 Dec 1947). Brazilian composer. He began piano studies at the age of six at the Nova Friburgo Conservatory, studying classical music for 15 years. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1968, where he successfully participated in the Third Rio International Song Festival. He then went to Paris to study orchestration and analysis with Nadia Boulanger and composition with Jean Barraqué. After his return to Brazil, Gismonti developed a personal style incorporating Arabian and Italian melodies (his family’s heritage), classical and contemporary music (especially Villa-Lobos and Stravinsky), traditional national genres (folklore, choro, bossa nova), Brazilian Indian themes and jazz. Influenced by the choro, Gismonti taught himself to play the guitar. He has played, recorded and toured throughout the world with several musicians. Since his first recording in 1969 he has made about 50 albums of his own compositions (most released by ECM Records and EMI-Brazil), in which he plays the piano, guitar, various flutes (including Indian instruments), kalimbas and other instruments, winning several prizes. He has also worked as a producer, arranger or player in several other musicians’ recordings. Gismonti’s compositions encompass a great diversity of musical elements and forms, both Brazilian and international, and have been written for solo instruments, ensembles, symphony orchestras, dance, theatre, films, exhibitions and poetic anthologies.