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Tango for listening
By Elsa Bragato
Elsa Bragato is professor in Letters, journalist,
director of the supplement Última Hora of Crónica, daughter
of José Bragato and
advanced student of violoncello.
It was like a house, with its two courtyards "pulmones
de manzana" (urban space in a block on which buildings are not allowed).
And, facing the entrance corridor, there was a door through which we
entered what we called the "music room". The piano was there, inherited
from my grandfather and which was of daily use for my father, a wall-to-wall
bookstand, the "combinado" (radio tuner and record player) of then,
the 78 RPM discs and the LP´s, the writing desk, two little pieces
of furniture made by the nonno (grandpa), wood worker and
flutist (don Enrico Bragato) and "piles" of sheet music, besides music
stands in a corner, a red carpet and four chairs in the same color.
It was the place of meeting with Astor,
my father and any musician
arriving at these lands, without exaggeration.
And Piazzolla was not the exception. There he tested
sounds, chords, interchanged ideas with my father, there many changes
in tango must have sprung up, which were already "bubbling" in don Astor´s
head. It was a sacred place.
When my father was working, which was something continued
and daily, unless he were at the teatro Colón or with the Channel
13 orchestra or at some recording, neither my sister nor I were allowed
to "disturb". Only my mother, doña Herminia, was allowed to wait
on, at a determined time, her tasty "Italian style coffee".
I remember as if it were today that Astor and my father
talked about new tango and the "reaction" that it would
arise, or that it had already sprung up. This is something I have a
little bit blurred. What is clear is that both came from playing all
the weekends with the "típicas".
The dancing parties in Carnival, the weekend balls,
were circumstances in which we "missed" our father. We knew that, as
soon as he arrived from the Colón theater, he had to change clothes,
tune up his instrument and leave, coming back home on Sundays, nearly
by daylight. That is to say, that they knew by heart the tango that
was meant for dancing, each one with whatever orchestra. Astor,
with Troilo; my father with
Francini-Pontier,
Fresedo, and many and many
others. And, at least in daddy's case, he had developed almost a "phobia":
my sister and I could not go to the dancing parties of our school partners,
the then known as "asaltos", because he did not like them. He never
saw with good eyes, then, that people danced while they played.
When the possibility of the Octeto Buenos Aires came,
nobody talked, I mean at least neither Astor nor my father, of "killing
danced tango", in spite of the fact they disliked it. They talked, instead,
of creating a "tango to be listened to, of making something avant-garde,
different", as counterpart to tango for dancing.
They said it was the same as in classical music: there
were waltzes, ballet and also symphonies, chamber groups.
My father always was part of some string quartet, besides
his numerous occupations in orchestras, as soloist of the Filarmónica
de Buenos Aires; first was the Cuarteto Buenos Aires and later the Cuarteto
Pessina, perhaps the most prestigious in the country as for classical
music.
The knowledge Astor assimilated in Europe allowed him
to enter another environment with his music. This is the truth: they
did not want to kill anybody, to take out anybody from the way but to
offer tango from a different place, like chamber music.
If we analyze it at a distance, neither Astor nor the
musicians who followed him in his "craze" of the Octeto Buenos Aires
were mistaken; today co-exist the tango for dancing as well as the chamber
tango, or tango simply for listening.
In both cases, they are always pleasant. And, as a
paradox, Julio Bocca normally choreographs and dances Astor
Piazzolla´s tangos.
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