Estudios sobre la obra de Astor Piazzolla (review)

Given the complexity and breadth of Astor Piazzolla’s compositional output, to say nothing of his ascendant popularity among classical musicians looking to diversity their repertoire, it is somewhat surprising that there has been, until recently, no book length study of Piazzolla from a musicological perspective. Piazzolla’s life, like his work, spanned several continents and diverse musical and cultural milieus; he was a well-known target and source of polemics in his native Argentina and an outspoken and often playful interlocutor, all of which have led to a number of fascinating and entertaining biographies and works of cultural criticism (Collier and Azzi, Gorín, Kuri). But often in these books Piazzolla the man (and Piazzolla the myth) tend to eclipse Piazzolla’s music, so this new volume of collected works is a particularly refreshing and unique contribution. Compiled by Omar García Brunelli, the book includes contributions by more than a dozen musicologists, as well as brief contributions by psychologist and essayist Carlos Kuri and journalist/historian Sergio Pujol. While some of these articles originally appeared in other publications and in other languages (including three from this journal, fi rst published in English), the book is of particular use in presenting materials that were originally presented during two Piazzolla conferences (one in 2000 at CUNY, and the second in 2004, the Primeras Jornadas de Investigación Astor Piazzolla in Buenos Aires) that remain otherwise unpublished or diffi cult to obtain. Some articles were expanded or edited for this volume, and the Spanish translations are uniformly faithful and even elegant. Piazzolla’s compositional language poses a number of challenges that confound straightforward score analysis. Classical training in “academic” composition techniques with teachers including Alberto Ginastera and Nadia Boulanger shaped his approach, but so did his instrumental study and years of playing “traditional” tango alongside such masters of the genre as Aníbal Troilo. Furthermore, Piazzolla’s tendency to write for groups that he performed in, as well as his reliance on musicians who were fl uent improvisers in jazz, avant-garde styles, and traditional tango blur the lines between composition, improvisation, and performance, and published scores are often quite incomplete records of the complete piece of music as performed. Carlos Kuri’s article “Agonía del género y potencia del nombre” opens the book with the argument that one of the defi ning characteristics of Piazzolla’s aesthetic was his continual search for “the other” in tango, and the “friction” between genres within one language. Piazzolla fashioned himself the creator of a new genre, “Tango nuevo,” that adapted the idiom of traditional tango to the techniques of contemporary academic composition and