Carabelli 2

(I've no academic authority to write on the history of tango music: I'm just trying to work it out for myself. What I've written may well be wrong in places, but it is based on the stories in Todotango and Wikepedia. & it's based on my own ears, what I've heard when I've listened to the music, so of course it is partial and biased: no apologies for that.)

I get the impression that at the end of the 1920s and into the 30s Carabelli's recordings set the pace, arrangements written by a highly skilled classical musician experienced in ensemble playing, who was excited by the rhythmic vitality of jazz and was also respectful of the tango of the day. Busoni thought of music without prescriptive labels, and Carabelli chose to make tango richer, he took tango to a new level. To me his recordings are the earliest tango that actually sounds like the tango of the Golden Age. I can't help hearing, for instance, a direct link between the music of Carabelli and Pedro Laurenz. Not only did Laurenz play in the OTV, but his tango sounds rooted in Carabelli as if Laurenz, with his powerful sense of rhythm and energetic playing, turned up Carabelli's more restrained music to 11. 

There are other links between tango and jazz. Fresedo had visited the US as early as 1921, but I've not noticed much jazz influence that early: it seems it was Carabelli who made decisive use of what he'd heard in jazz. Fresedo, of course, recorded some marvellous tracks with Dizzy Gillespie much later in 1956.

I've just come across this, tango in 1912, when Canaro was 24, when Carabelli was still in Bologna. But tango recording started to peak in the late 20s, when sound quality was reasonably good. Records must have made a huge difference. For the first time musicians could listen to a wide range of music whenever they wanted, and could listen over and over again and explore the details, finding out how and why a piece sounded as it did, instead of relying on piano scores, the bare bones of a piece, or a transitory live performances, or half-remembered renditions. I'm sure the availability of recordings must have contributed to the speed of change in the music.

& I'm curious: I'd love to know what was in Canaro's record collection in 1930, or Fresedo's, or D'Arienzo's! For sure they'd have had a Victrola at home, at least so they could listen to their own recordings, and shelves of 78s. I wonder if we'll know some day: I assume that the history of the music and the dance are subjects for research in Buenos Aires. Perhaps one day there will be a really detailed history, hopefully in English. I enjoy Canaro a lot, but on reflection it occurs to me that the Canaro I love has always been between 1929 and the late thirties, a period during which his music became more supple, it 'sang', he didn't want all the notes to be the same length. Earlier Canaro is a bit rigid, and his later music is often quite strident.

The OTV and the Orquesta Carabelli only existed for recording. Apparently neither ever gave live performances, which is curious because I suspect the music he played, and the music that followed his lead, had a big influence on the way people danced. I suspect the dance developed a melodic sensibility to get closer to this new music with its fusion of opposites, of romantic classicism and the rhythmic urgency of jazz, and the result was a smooth intimate dance full of feeling. I don't know if he danced tango himself, or hung out in milongas, but he seemed to have had a very instinctive feel for the music people would want to dance to. His output of dance music recordings, including jazz and tango, was considerable: it's just that there aren't so many recordings of tango with his name on. (I read that his jazz orquesta performed live.) Perhaps his name isn't well known in tango simply because there just aren't that many Orquesta Carabelli recordings available: most of Carabelli's recordings are as the OTV.

It's not so easy to find the recordings Carabelli made under his own name. I've got the Buenos Aires Tango Club (BATC) CD, which is excellent: buy it and you support local enterprise, and the activity of people who really care about preserving their music. They issue two other CDs: 'Inspiracion' with many of the same tracks as the BATC CD, and 'Mi Evocacion', which is the CD on Spotify, and is a mixture of dance music, some tango. Check out their catalogue, which is huge and excellent. They don't sell downloads so it means importing CDs, but their CDs are probably cheaper per track than buying downloads.

iTunes has three CDs, but I haven't downloaded them, so I don't know what's on them: they may also be a mixture of different kinds of dance music. El Bandoneon in Barcelona has a CD, but it is out of stock. Amazon UK currently has 71 tracks for download though some tracks are duplicates and not all are tango. But at least La Guiñada, and Quatro Palabaras are there. (If you don't mind contributing to Amazon's untaxed profits, that is.)

As to OTV, there's no shortage of recordings of this marvelous music. Spotify has a number of albums, and the two-volume Euro Records selection is available from BATC. (Euro records is part of the BATC: same catalogue.)

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that it is all so good: I've yet to come across anything from Carabelli, whether as Carabelli or as OTV, that wasn't really excellent. His name deserves to be known better. It's not that he's undervalued: his name just isn't known, but I believe he established the tango we still dance to.

Carabelli 1

Tango came up fast. What was tango until the late 1920s? The names that have survived are Canaro, Firpo, Fresedo, Donato, Lomuto and the newcomer, Julio de Caro. Canaro in 1925 was metronomic. The beat is absolutely precise and controlled, march-like. It's a bit stiff to dance to, it's played without much emotion: the music is there, but there's not much depth of feeling in it. Much the same for Firpo. Feeling floods in with De Caro, from his educated classical background.

I can't resist including this photo of de Caro and his sextet. There's no doubting the year because in 1925 he took on a talented second bandoneon, Pedro Laurenz, then just 23, to play alongside the other Pedro, Pedro Maffia. But Maffia left the band in 1926. Such a marvellous photo: imagine going to a milonga and the band dressed like this, as formal as an international string quartet, although de Caro, just 26 himself, stands a bit at ease, slightly proprietorial, one hand resting in a pocket, his Stroh violin and bow hanging from the other. A 26 year-old who's achieved something new and very popular. In 1934 Laurenz was to leave and start his own orquesta – with Osvaldo Pugliese as pianist.

So, tango at the end of the 1920s. Here's Canaro, Tengo Miedo, 1929.  (These tracks open in YouTube, as it's easy to access.) It's fun, but compared to the tango we know now, the beat is very precise, it's stiff to dance to, it's rather 'straight'. Perhaps it suits canyengue better than tango. The notes are there, but hardly the feeling we expect. 

Here's Julio de Caro in 1930. It's closer to what we expect, but it still doesn't quite make it. There's much more feeling, perhaps too much in the violin, and at the expense of rhythm.  De Caro recorded a lot, but it's rare to hear his music in the milongas now. A kind of sentimental late romanticism creeps in, slurring over the notes as if to disguise the rigid beat, as if he was uneasy with overly rhythmic music. I like listening to it, but it's not great for dancing to. 

& since 1925 there had been a new band, the Orquesta Tipica Victor. Here's their version of Coqueta in 1929. (It's the first track on a playlist.) Suddenly we're in another world, and it's a more familiar tango world. It's simply a beautiful piece of music and it's beautifully played, full of feeling. It sings. There's variety in the arrangement, alternating smooth, legato phrases with stronger rhythmic chords, and using orchestral textures, the high violins and the lower sounds of the bandoneon and, I think, a cello. The phrases surge with life, and fit effortlessly together. The rhythm is clear and assured, but it's varied and never overwhelming. Easy to imagine yourself dancing to this late at night with a favourite partner: it's music full of tenderness. 

The OTV was directed by Adolfo Carabelli, who had his own orquesta too. & if Coqueta sings, the Orquesta Carabelli's El Pensamiento (1932) swings. My ear caught the bass line behind the singer: it sounds so familiar you hardly notice it. OTV and the Orquesta Carabelli swing throughout: they have the trick of playing one note a little long, and the next slightly shorter (or vice-versa) so the beat is emphasized. & somehow the sound is full and consistent, whereas the sound in Canaro and de Caro seems to be patchy as if they're not quite sure what to say. With OTV and Carabelli I suddenly begin to hear a kind of tango that is fully recognisable. Tango didn't take the direction of Canaro's formally precise beat, nor the romantic excess of De Caro. 

Of course, there are examples and examples. Canaro in 1929 could sound more sensitive,  and there's a great clip of De Caro playing both for stage and social tango: his music here is a much more recognisable tango. The film, Luces de Buenos Aires (1931), features Gardel, and shows how successful De Caro was. Incidentally, the clip shows stage tango from 1931, exaggerated then as now: the social dancing in the clip is relatively smooth.  

 So who was Carabelli (1893–1947)? He was older than de Caro and a few years younger than Canaro. Todotango has it that Canaro grew up playing a home-made violin for coins on the back streets of San José de Mayo in Uruguay, while Carabelli studied composition, harmony and counterpoint as a child. A prodigy on piano, by 15 he had performed in Buenos Aires concert halls, so he was sent to Europe to continue his studies. He was accepted at the Lyceum of Bologna, where he studied with Busoni, himself a child prodigy, a piano virtuoso from an early age. Busoni is chiefly known for his opera Turandot, and for an unfinished opera, Doktor Faust. He's also known for many piano arrangements of J S Bach, music he seems to have had a close feeling for. He thought of music as without prescriptive labels, and in 1907 he had written about the possibilities of microtonal and even electronic music.

At 20, in 1913, Carabelli graduated as a Master in Composition. (The first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was in May that year, which Carabelli must have been aware of.) At the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Buenos Aires, where he played the classical repertoire with the Trío Argentina.

Then in 1917 he met the Russian pianist Lipoff, who was touring as pianist to Ana Pavlova, innumerable dying swans worldwide in the twilight of her career. In 1914 she'd left Europe for the USA with her husband, her touring career in Europe presumably cut short by the outbreak of WW1. (In 1917 she also danced in Lima, Peru, where an English boy called Frederick Ashton was taken by his parents to a performance. He was so impressed, he made dance his life. Sir Frederick Ashton became famous as a choreographer, a co-founder and director of the Royal Ballet.)

Todotango adds: 'Lipoff had a wide knowledge of jazz music; Carabelli marvelled with this expression and he devoted to it definitively'.

What was jazz in 1917? Ragtime: Scott Joplin died in 1917. Blues: WC Handy, 1873 – 1958. Buddy Bolden 1877 – 1931: his band was a top draw from 1900 onwards in New Orleans. Stride piano: Jelly Roll Morton, 1890–1941, was in New York in 1911, and writing down his compositions from 1914. (Both Handy and Morton made use of the habanera rhythm, too.) King Oliver was just getting going in 1917, and Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith came a few years later. 

The earliest jazz recordings were made in 1917. They were successful, and led to the worldwide popularity of the music, but in 1917 you probably got to know jazz from written music and by listening live. If Lipoff was Pavlova's pianist when she arrived in New York in 1914, he must have heard jazz live there, and he could probably reproduce what he heard. He could also have had a folder of sheet music as it's said Scott Joplin, WC Handy and Morton published sheet music. A broad range of pre-bop jazz existed in 1917.

Inspired, Carabelli started the River Jazz Band in Buenos Aires. In 1925 he was hired by Victor to lead an orquesta that could play jazz or tango, and he made his first tango recordings. He was able to choose excellent musicians. He recorded under his own name, and also as director of Orquesta Tipica Victor, with many of the same musicians. He directed the orquesta, played piano, wrote the arrangements, and rehearsed the musicians, many of whom would have trained classically in local conservatoires. The personnel varied, and included prominent players from the other orquestas of the time. Pedro Laurenz and Anibal Troilo both passed through OTV, as did other excellent musicians and vocalists. Carabelli continued recording jazz too, as well as versions of all the other popular dances of the day.

Carabelli was innovative in other ways: he recorded Milonga Sentimental with Carlos Lafuente in 1932, possibly the first recorded milonga in tango history. The words had been written by Homero Manzi the previous year. (It's on the Buenos Aires Tango Club CD of Carabelli.)

In 1936 Carabelli gave up leadership of the OTV, and made his last recording, a fox trot, in 1940, retiring to his home town where he lived by teaching until his death seven years later.