One of the many remarkable things about Latin American music is that it can provide opportunities to learn about performance styles that we may never have even been aware of. Case in point: the performance styles that have been influenced by the tango.
The tango is a partner dance that originated near the end of the 19th century along the border between Argentina and Uruguay. It was at first a rudimentary dance form that was cultivated by poor and mixed ancestry young men who introduced it into low-life establishments. Indeed, the word “tango,” though it could have possibly been derived from Latin, is widely thought to actually have been an African slave word meaning “drum” or “drum place.” Today, the tango consists of a variety of styles that developed not only in different regions of Argentina but also in other locations around the world.
Many composers of classical music have been influenced by the tango, of whom Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) is perhaps the most well known. He developed a string technique known as “chicharra” which Piazzolla used to imitate the sounds of a cicada-like insect common during the Argentine summer. Here’s Jeremy Cohen demonstrating this effect:
Although developed on the violin (one of the principal instruments of the typical tango orchestra), other instruments can emulate this technique. But if you were playing not string music, but music for winds, how would you produce this effect?
One of the pieces in our catalog, “Tangoescente” by Argentine composer Adriana Verdié, provides an excellent solution, for two reasons. First, in this work the expressive melody in the oboe (a bonus: notice the starting and stopping quality of this very tango-like melody) is accompanied by percussive-like stopped tones in the flute that mimic the chicharra not with a bow, but with a combination of key slapping and alternating articulations.
Go ahead and follow along with the excerpt above as you listen to the Quintessential Winds as they perform “Tangoescente.”
Second, the relatively easy lines and slow pace of this piece make it eminently suitable for high school and college level wind quintets.
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