#MUSICAL SONORITY HOW TO#
In the second part, I determined how to incorporate aspects from the violinists' styles – and particularly Bajour's – into my own style, culminating in the creation of a solo arrangement. In the first part of my project, I made comparative case studies of each piece. After making a database of Piazzolla's discography, I discovered that Piazzolla had recorded the same arrangements with violinists Elvino Vardaro, Antonio Agri and Fernando Suarez Paz. Focusing on Piazzolla interpreta a Piazzolla, I determined three criteria to analyze: sound, phrase structure and ornamentation. After hearing Bajour's performance of “Decarissimo” on that album, I wished to understand his style in greater detail. Recorded in 1961, the album Piazzolla interpreta a Piazzolla, became a great turning point in tango history, establishing the quintet as the definitive formation of tango nuevo. He was best known as the original violinist of Astor Piazzolla's first quintet, though their collaboration was short-lived, including only two albums. Szymsia Bajour was one of the greatest tango violinists, but his contribution to tango is often overlooked due to a paucity of recordings. I also argue that it is due to both the musical heterogeneity that shaped early tango expressions in Argentina and the primacy of performance practices in shaping the genre’s sound that contemporary artists have been able to approach tango as a vehicle capable of accommodating the new musical identities resulting from their socially diverse and diasporic realities. I argue that these novel expressions are recognized as tango not because of their melodies, harmonies or rhythmic patterns, but because of the ways these features are “musicalized” by the performers.
In addition, based on fieldwork conducted in Basel, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Gerona, Paris, and Rotterdam, I examine the mechanism through which musicians (some experienced tango players with longstanding ties with the genre, others young performers who have only recently fully embraced tango) engage with these new forms in order to revisit, create or reconstruct a sense of personal or communal identity through their performances and compositions. Drawing on the ideas of Russian linguist Mikhail Bakhtin (concepts of dialogic relationships and polyvocality), I explore the creative mechanisms that allowed these and other artists to engage with a multiplicity of seemingly irreconcilable idioms within the framing concept of tango in order to accommodate their own musical needs and inquietudes. I focus primarily on the work of a number of Argentine composers who went into political exile in the late 1970s and who continue to live abroad. This dissertation examines the various dialogues that have shaped the evolution of contemporary tango variants in Paris since the late 1970s.
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