Nationality: Argentinian

Born in Toulouse, France*, Dec 11, 1890
Died in Medellín, Colombia, June 24, 1935

*Gardel’s birthplace is not verified with 100% certainty. However, we do know that he was living in Buenos Aires by early childhood.¹

• Carlos Gardel [pronounced “gar-DELL”] is largely credited for making Tango an international sensation in the 1920s and 30s.
• Gardel grew up singing and worked jobs in the many opera houses of Buenos Aires. He recorded his first album in 1917, titled “Mi Noche Triste.”
  • Fun fact – before Gardel’s recordings, Tango was considered (by most) to be a purely instrumental genre.
• Once Gardel reached a certain level of fame as a musician, he began starring in Spanish-language movies as well. He ultimately created his own production company.
• Gardel died at just 45 years old when his private plane crashed in Colombia. He had been touring throughout South America at the time.²

Born in Buenos Aires, April 11, 1916
Died in Geneva, June 25, 1983

Biography

Born in Santa Fe, Argentina, April 5, 1912
Died in Santa Fe, Argentina, Oct 29, 2000³

• Carlos Guastavino’s music is almost entirely made up of “miniatures,” i.e., songs for voice and piano and piano character pieces.
  • Guastavino has been referred to as “The Argentine Schubert” or “The Schubert of the Pampas” due to his extensive output of art songs.⁴
• The composer strongly opposed mid-20th-century contemporary musical trends and never diverged from tonal harmony and traditional forms. His music has a nationalist sentiment and portrays a tender nostalgia for his homeland.
• Guastavino maintained a long collaborative friendship with poet León Benarós (translate to English), whose words Guastavino set to music in more than 60 songs.⁵

Guastavino’s obituary in The Guardian

Born in Mar del Plata, March 11, 1921
Died in Buenos Aires, July 5, 1992

• Born in Argentina to Italian immigrants, Piazzolla was a bandoneón child prodigy who grew up in New York’s Greenwich Village.
• As a young person, Piazzolla worked in Argentine dance bands and studied classical music with Alberto Ginastera.
• Piazzolla studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, who encouraged his unique blend of tango influenced by classical and jazz styles, which he called tango nuevo.⁷
  • Piazzolla is responsible for bringing Tango, the beloved national genre of Argentina, to the international stage. However, many native Argentinians disapproved of the composer’s tango nuevo and thought his music cold and cerebral.
  • Nevertheless, Piazzolla’s distinctive voice is widely appealing and accessible to lovers of classical, jazz, and popular music.⁸

Learn More

Biography from the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society
Biography from Britannica

Born in Buenos Aires, June 15, 1916
Died in Buenos Aires, Aug 19, 2016

• Salgán was a classically trained pianist, ¹ organist, composer and bandleader. He directed a number of tango orchestras starting in 1944. Later in life he also performed as part of the Quinteto Real,² and collaborated in a duo with guitarist Ubaldo de Lío.³

“I began to compose because I wanted to play tango in a pre-established way. I didn’t want to be a composer but to play tangos the way I liked. The same happened with the orchestra. As I liked to play tangos in my own style, the only possible way was having my own group. Then I put it together. There are people who enjoy being bandleaders but I was interested in my pianistic vocation. I had no intention of creating anything.”Horacio Salgán ⁴

“The orchestras led by Salgán in the years 1944 to 1957 widen the traditional form of tango, deal with the rhythmical aspect in depth and add to it a Black touch, creating a new kind of tango trend deeply rooted in its tradition but receptive to Bartók, Ravel, jazz and Brazilian music.” Music critic for Le Monde (Paris)⁵

“Training in Western symphonic music opened up a whole world of harmony, orchestration and pianistic execution. But there’s also a black dimension to my music. It’s not casual, nor flagrant, but part of my origin . . . my style and my truth.”Salgán⁶

Biography and more

Sources

1. Adam Bernstein, “Horacio Salgán, Argentine tango composer and musical pathbreaker, dies at 100,” The Washington Post (August 23, 2016), accessed January 16, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/horacio-salgan-argentine-tango-composer-and-musical-pathbreaker-dies-at-100/2016/08/23/bc075688-688f-11e6-8225-fbb8a6fc65bc_story.html.
2. Sonia Ursini, Horacio Salgán: la supervivencia de un artista en el tiempo (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1993), accessed January 16, 2020, http://www.todotango.com/english/artists/biography/1047/Horacio-Salgan/.
3. Bernstein, “Horacio Salgán, Argentine tango composer and musical pathbreaker, dies at 100,” The Washington Post.
4. Ursini, Horacio Salgán: la supervivencia de un artista en el tiempo.
5. Excerts from Sonia Ursini, Horacio Salgán: la supervivencia de un artista en el tiempo (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1993), accessed January 16, 2020, http://www.todotango.com/english/artists/biography/1047/Horacio-Salgan/. 
6. Quoted in Tango: The Art and History of Love by Robert Farris Thompson (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 197.

Pieces

A fuego lento