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"I
was writing symphonies, chamber music, string quartets. But when Nadia
Boulanger analyzed my music, she complained that she couldn't find any
Piazzolla in there. She could find Ravel and Stravinsky, maybe Bela Bartok
or Hindemith, but never Piazzolla. The truth is I was ashamed to tell her
that I was a tango musician, that I had worked in the whorehouses and cabarets
of Buenos Aires. Tango musician was a dirty word in Argentina when I was
young. It was the underworld. But Nadia made me play a tango for her on
the piano, and then she said, "You
idiot! don't you know, this is the real Piazzolla, not the other one? You
can throw all that other music away". So I threw away ten years work, and
started with my Tango Nuevo in 1954."
"I
think that music or styles of music should not be explained, especially
Tango Nuevo. You feel it or not. If it's old fashioned, or traditional,
or contemporary, that's another story. This music is trying to be another
story, it's just a new way of feeling the music of my city, Buenos Aires.
Some musicians (the non-deaf ones) love it and people who love music also,
but our "tangueros" hate me, only because I changed the old tango. I only
turned it upside down like a stocking, but the question is why did I do
it ? Tango, like jazz, must change. There was a needing of new music (harmonies,
rhythms, melodies, arrangements) and 40 years of battling against enemies
who wouldn't accept it."
Astor
Piazzolla, New York, July 1987.
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