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Nickname: El colorado
Pianist, leader and composer
2 November 1912 ~ 31 March 1992 |
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Edgard Pisani Ricci and Johan for responding to my question posted on TodoTango forum, and also Johan Eckart Hansen from Denmark, who shares with me his tango collection and information.
Alfredo De Angelis
Alfredo De Angelis is another tango orchestra leader whom I love very much, but again like Francisco Canaro, it is difficult to define his musical style, because there are not much obvious and unique elements in his music. Yet he has several pieces that you can immediately recognize when you hear them. As usual, I am not so fond of telling the story of his life, not because they are not important, just because you can easily find them out on the internet (see the links below); what is more interesting to me is his musical style. But before I try to talk about it, it is necessary to state some facts here:
First, Alfredo De Angelis’s orchestra had a very long musical life, it started playing in 1943, and it played until 1977. Within these 34 years, it made total 486 recordings.
Second, singers played an important role in his orchestra, and he had worked with many singers (more than 10). Among them, Carlos Dante, Julio Martel and Oscar Larroca are the most famous and had worked with him for long period of time. In fact, most of the CDs available nowadays are his recordings with these 3 singers. While I was preparing this article, besides reading materials about De Angelis, I also had to read the materials about his singers in order to have a complete picture about the musician.
Here are some of Dante-Martel duets:
- Pregonera (composed by Alfredo De Angelis) (Tango) from CD “Los Dúos De Carlos Dante y Julio Martel Vol. 2” (Reliquias)
- Pobre Flor ( Primera Ilusion) (Vals) from CD “Los Dúos De Carlos Dante y Julio Martel Vol. 2” (Reliquias)
- Mi Carinto (Vals) from CD “Los Dúos De Carlos Dante y Julio Martel Vol. 2” (Reliquias)
Third, he was also the promoter of vocal duets in the 40s. The most standout combination is Dante-Martel, which left 17 recordings; and then the next is Dante-Larroca. Without doubt, many of these duets pieces are among his most celebrated recordings.
Neat Simple Tango
This is how Blaya described his music, “De Angelis had the beauty of a harmonious and synchronized work… an efficient handling of rhythm, a careful respect for melody and the showcasing of the singer” *. For me, it is a very accurate description. If I want to add more on top of that, I would say De Angelis balanced the melody and the beat very well. It is true that De Angelis paid a lot of attention to the singers, in most cases, he handed the melody part almost completely to them. But at the same time, the beat is also well-respected throughout the music. It is not difficult to find that while the singer plays with the melody, the beat is taken care by the orchestra, mainly the bass, the piano and the bandoneon. (Violin has a different role, see below) I believe it is the reason why his music is so popular among dancers during his time, and it is still appreciated by dancers nowadays.
Merry-Go-Rounds
This is a negative ｅxpression of De Angelis’s orchestra given by some people (if you want to know why, see Blaya’s article*), but for me the word represents his other characteristic rather well. Here I am talking about the effect of syncopation again (if you do not know what is syncopation, please check my article about Rodolfo Biagi). Unlike Biagi, De Angelis did not play around syncopation, even at the end of the musical phrases, which is the place that the syncopation effect can be usually heard, the effect of syncopation is rather weak. This made the music sounds smooth and constant, likes flowing water in the river, or the merry-go-rounds.
Instrumental Arrangement
De Angelis himself was the pianist and the conductor of the orchestra, but the piano is not the most standout instrument in the orchestra. In fact, if I have to choose an instrument which standouts out the most, I would choose the violin, even though each instrument has more or less the same importance. In a vocal piece, as I suggested above, the melody was usually taken care by the singer, then the bass and the piano, sometimes also with the bandoneon took care the beat. Then the violin always plays a secondary melody as decoration above the vocal part (main melody), which for me always sounds like the breath or wind to the music. Here I personally believe that this arrangement is very wise and nice, as it utilizes and presents the sound quality of the violin – being able to produce long and unbreakable phrase and note with different texture, its tension and wide range of sound. You can easily hear all these when you pay attention to the part of the violin. Some of my tango friends who like De Angelis’s music mentioned to me about the violin in his music, at first I did not pay much attention to that, but now I agree with them.
The focus of my discussion in this article is only his early vocal pieces, those with Carlos Dante, Julio Martel, Oscar Larroca and Floreal Ruiz. I like De Angelis’s instrumental pieces very well, but with them it is not easy to tell his style. And also because of the limited number of recordings I can obtain, it is not possible for me to look at his music from his later period (the 60s and 70s). Definitely there are still more to be discovered from his music, but at the moment, let us enjoy his great hits.
Listen to the violin part in these pieces:
- La Novena (sung by Carlos Dante)(Tango) from CD “Fumando Espero” (Reliquias)
- La Vida Me Engaño (sung by Julio Martel)(Tango) from CD “Sus Exitos Con Julio Martel” (Reliquias)
* Ricardo García Blaya, “Alfredo De Angelis” www.todotango.com/english/creadores/adeangelis.html
Internet resources:
Alfredo De Angelis
/www.todotango.com/english/creadores/adeangelis.html
www.elportaldeltango.com/english/especial/deangelis.htm
www.elportaldeltango.com/english/personas/Ingles/deangelis.htm
Floreal Ruiz
www.todotango.com/english/creadores/fruiz.html
www.elportaldeltango.com/english/historias/floreal.htm
Carlos Dante
www.todotango.com/english/creadores/dante.asp
Julio Martel
www.todotango.com/english/creadores/jmartel.asp
Oscar Larroca
www.todotango.com/english/creadores/olarroca.asp |
