Astor Piazzola is a representative musician who comes to mind when hearing music called tango, and is famous as a bandoneónist and an Argentine composer. His tango music revolutionized the creation of Nuevo Tango with modern variations.
Astor Piazzola (1921.3.11.-1992.7.4) was born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the only child of Vincento Piazzola and Manetti, parents of Italian immigrants.
He mainly listened to jazz and classical music rather than tango, and liked to play Bach and Schumann’s music and popular jazz music as a bandoneon.
In 1953, at the invitation of Nadia Boulange, a legendary French music educator, she studied abroad to play her own tango music and receive praise.
For Piazzola, who thought classical music was her way and considered tango only as a means of livelihood, she was completely transformed into a tango musician.
His representative works include “Libertão,” “Oblivion,” and “Adios Nonino.” His music is loved all over the world and is recognized as an icon of Argentine music.
1. Tango and Bandoneon of Piazzola
Piazzola was exposed to jazz and classical music including Bach when she was young. At home, she listened to her father’s tango orchestra album, and in 1929, she started playing the bandoneón that her father bought from a pawnshop in New York.
After moving to New York in 1930, the family moved to Italian town in Manhattan. He wrote his first tango, “La Catinga,” in 1932, at the age of 11.
The following year, he received a music lesson from Vela Vilda, a Hungarian classical pianist who was a student of Rachmaninoff, from whom he learned to play Bach as a vandoneon.
In 1943, at the age of 22, he began piano lessons for five years with Argentine classical pianist Rál Spivak, and as a result wrote his first classical work, collections for violin and piano.
In 1943, he met his first wife, Dedé Wolff, who was an artist, and married. She also had two children, Diana and Daniel.
2. Meeting Piazzola and Dede Wolff
Odetta Maria Wolf, affectionately known as Dedé, first met Astor Piazolla at a tea party in September 1940. When Dede saw Piazolla, he thought he was rather ugly, but Piazolla was attracted to Dede as a woman.
Odetta Maria Wolff (1914–2010) was an Argentine painter who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in September 1914. She learned painting from Argentine surrealist painter Vicente Forte.
Over time, the two began to date, and soon Piazzola spoke to Dede’s father, after which a formal engagement was held in May 1942 and the two quickly became engaged. The wedding took place in late October 1942.
Dede was 18 and Piazzola was 20. Piazzola was a bandoneon player in the trilo band, who had a busy life traveling around the country.
However, they developed a love interest and enjoyed a honeymoon in the Cordoba Mountains after getting married. He found his first home in Buenos Aires.
They fell madly in love, and in July 1943, their daughter Diana Irene was born, followed by their son Daniel Hugo in 1945.
While young couples and their children settled into a comfortable routine, their musical activities in Piazola’s Troilo were getting bigger and bigger.
In 1953, a fateful thing happened to Piazzola. He released “Sinfonietta,” which he composed for orchestral music, and Nadia Boulange, a legendary French music educator, invited him to learn music. The following year, he went to Paris with his wife, Dede, to study abroad.
Boulanger found something unique in Piazzola’s self-composed songs. He persistently asked her if she had ever performed any music other than classical music. Piazzola didn’t want to reveal that she had performed tango music, so she kept talking and hesitating, but eventually came out saying that she was a tango player. Tango was music that was different from traditional music up until then.
When Piazzola played his own tango, Blancje recognized Piazzola’s talent and praised it as “true Piazzola’s music.” Until then, Piazzola only considered tango as a means of livelihood, but with Blancje’s praise, Piazzola was completely transformed into a tango musician.
Piazzola attended a class for composition by Blancje and Dede participated in the class for his passion for painting. Dede received a Fabian Sevitsky Award and a scholarship from the French government, and learned how to paint under the guidance of Andre Lohte, a famous Cubist.
And in their free time, they often went to see movies and spent a lot of time in museums and art exhibitions. They could have stayed in Paris while traveling all over Europe, working on music and painting, but Piazzola wanted to return to her native Argentina. And they decided to go back to Argentina.
However, with Piazzola’s decision to return to Argentina, new changes come to their lives. After returning to Argentina, their relationship deteriorated a little bit. The political disagreement between the two and Piazzola’s natural flirtation were problematic.
3. Piazzola’s flirtation with Dede
After returning to Argentina, they realized the situation was not good and eventually moved to New York to turn the situation around. Piazzola continued to struggle to make a living as a musician and arranger, and the family returned to Buenos Aires, Argentina once again.
However, the marital relationship began to creak further as they returned to Argentina. Piazzola began to cheat. In the process, the once-solid relationship began to collapse dangerously.
Piazzola’s son Daniel was so flabbergasted when he saw his father staring at a woman on the street that he said, “It’s so weird that my dad only looks at women!”
Additionally, Dede and Piazzola have been arguing over political disagreements for some time, with Dede heavily interested in left-wing Peronism, while Piazzola was opposed to Peronism. Politically, the two were in complete opposition.
The Piazzola was once opposed to the Perons as they took power and wielded power like dictators, and they performed music praising the Perons with their own will.
Piazzola, an anti-peronist, had to play the Republic of Argentina and “Peron Praise” a long time ago, and even composed it himself. I was fed up with the Peronists because I continued to suffer from the pressure of them after that. It was a part that I acknowledged as a dark history.
Tensions between the two began to rise and Piazzola began seeing other women. Piazzola eventually left the apartment on February 2, 1966, with her suitcase packed.
“I really hope you find the right man for you,” Piazzola told Dede. That’s how their marriage ended. They ended up living separately, which is legally recognized. The official divorce took place 20 years later, in 1988, because it was illegal in Argentina.
After starting separation, Piazzola began to cheat in earnest.
Even while he was having an affair with another woman, he tried to play hard to get with his estranged wife, Dede, and was shameless in putting both legs.
On the day of the legal separation, Piazzola took Dede to lunch and then to her apartment. And offered, “Let’s meet once a week.” Dede was so offended that he refused, replying, “I’m not just a woman.”
Then, when he was in his 40s, Deede became pregnant but had an abortion on the advice of his doctor. When she called Piazola to tell him the news, he laughed coldly, saying, “It’s really fun.”
The story of Dede and Piazzola began with deep love, went through success and trials, and finally ended with a sad farewell. Their love journey shows how life can move in unpredictable directions, even if their initial love was powerful.
At one point, the two tried to reconcile to no avail. The biggest obstacle in the process was Amileta Baltar. She was in her mid-20s and Dede was in her 40s.
However, this family history also affected Piazzola’s music, and in the two years from 1966 to ’67, he could not write any works except for two pieces of film music.
This is the end of the love story between Piazzola and Dede, but again, let’s listen to their love story about the interference between Dede and Piazzola and the love between Amelita Walter and Astro Piazzola.
**Click the YouTube shortcut below to appreciate Pierzola’s masterpiece “Liber Tango.”
