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.
