An article jointly authored by Daniela Pastina and El Victrolero.
There are many popular images associated with tango. The one universally recognized is that of dance music. However, while tango from its beginnings had been associated with dance, it was never conceived exclusively as dance music but was composed and performed as music to be listened to. Another popular image is that of tango being a music of misery and sorrow. This notion is not a consequence of tango being dance music but originated from the texts of tango songs. It is one of the idiosyncrasies of tango that an enjoyable pastime—social dancing—is celebrated to texts memorializing affairs of the most disagreeable kind: lost love, disappointment, deception, alcoholism and even death.
It is, of course, not the subject matter of misery that has delighted the audience of tango but rather the quality of its poetry. Tango was fortunate to spark the interest of some excellent poets that have raised the expressiveness of song texts far above the commonplaces of most popular music, among them being Hómero Manzi, Enrique Cadícamo and Enrique Santos Discepolo, to mention just the most famous ones. The name of Carmelo Santiago will not be familiar to many tango aficionados; he is better known, in fact, as a director and producer of films. Nevertheless, he wrote some delightful tango texts. Amarras will be the most familiar one among tango dancers due to its magnificent recording by Héctor Mauré with the orchestra of Juan D'Arienzo. But there also others: La melodía de nuestro adiós (music by Fioravanti Di Cicco, recorded by Francisco Canaro), Cuando el corazón (music and recorded by Francisco Canaro; sung by Roberto Maida, it also appeared in the movie Dos amigos y un amor), and La melodía del corazón (music, after Chopin, by Fioravanti Di Cicco and Héctor María Artola and recorded by Edgar Donato).
1. The Poetry of Torment
The lyrics of Amarras provide a poignant example of a classical tango song for themes, images and psychological truth. The picture drawn by the poem transports the listener to one tango's mythical places of origin, the harbor. The image of a moored and disused coal boat, to which the protagonist of the poem compares himself, brilliantly invokes the classic tango motif of lost love. Tied to his past and having lost his beloved, the protagonist feels bereft of any reason for existence. Similar to Roman ruins in a Romantic painting, the coal boat moored to shore becomes a modernist symbol of a past activity, a relic with no prospect of further use other than being a reminder of the ephemeral quality of human achievement.
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| Example 1: Amarras |
As it occurred frequently with tango songs, the music appears to have been composed before the text. Indications for this circumstance can be found in the formal structure of the strophes and stanzas. Corresponding to the music, the text is divided into two strophes (indicated as A and B, respectively, in the left column of the example above). The strophes are, in turn, divided into three stanzas (numbered 1 to 3 in the left column of the example above), each of which contains two couplets or tercets. (The partition of verses into couplets or tercets is based on the rhyme scheme, which is highlighted in boldface characters.)
It is said that the first person singular, masculine, is the most common grammatical structure in tango poetry. No other poemcould demonstrate this point more clearly than Amarras. The contents of the first strophe (A.1-3) deals exclusively with the protagonist and describes his state of mind. Practically every stanza of the first strophe begins with a verb in the first person singular: “vago” (I wander), “soy” (I am), “siento” (I feel), and “lloro” (I cry). Moreover, these verbs are accentuated: they fall, in musical terms, on a downbeat (see the discussion of the music below). The prominent position of these action verbs in the first person singular calls attention to the emotional state of the protagonist and show him in a state of despair.
Only the first couplet of second stanza (A.2) diverges somewhat from the word pattern, inasmuch as the first line begins with a personal pronoun, which is—it comes as no surprise—“yo” (I). It is precisely in this couplet where the connection between the coal boat and the protagonist is unequivocally articulated. On the one hand, the initial words of each verse (underscored in the following example) establish the link between boat and protagonist. On the other hand, by changing the rhythm of the verses through an internal rhyme on the words “atado” (tied up), “pasado” (past), and “anclado” (anchored), the analogy between protagonist's inability to leave his past behind and the boat anchored at shore is vividly elucidated.
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Example 2: Amarras, A.2, first couplet
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In the following couplet, the poet changes the sound quality of words in order to evoke the feeling of being held back. Whereas the first couplet contains words with many open vowels (the internal rhyme is an obvious example), the a-sounds in the second couplet become shorter by being followed by r consonants (indicated in boldface in the following example). As if to make the pain felt through hook and line audible, harsher sounding words were chosen for this couplet. Moreover, the repetition of the word pattern “como garfios, como garras” intensifies the emotion of despair expressed by the protagonist.
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Example 3: Amarras, A. 2, second couplet
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The second strophe (B.1-3) turns away from the protagonist and directs the attention to his love lost. This change of focus is also reflected in the rhythmic structure of the verses. In the preceding strophe, the rhythmic stress fell on the first word of each couplet or tercet. Here in the second strophe, the verses start with unaccented syllables, and the rhythmic stress is laid on the end of the verse.
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Example 4: Amarras, rhythmic stresses
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The effect of this shift of stress is that of a rhythmic drive forward which finds its resolution at the end of the verse. Yet, the poet extended this drive to the end of the couplet or tercet, respectively, by introducing internal rhymes. In the first stanza of the second strophe (B.1), the decisive resolution of the rhythmic drive falls only onto the last word of the couplets. The thus accented words form, in turn, the rhyme of the stanza.
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Example 5: Amarras, B.1
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As in the first strophe, the second stanza (B.2) forms a contrast to the ones surrounding it. Here again the protagonist calls attention to his misfortune. In the first tercet, in particular, the poet intensified the rhythmic tension by squeezing more internal rhymes in the verses.
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Example 6: Amarras, B.2
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The subject matter of Amarrasis typical for many tango poems. The comparison between the unhappy lover and a coal boat had been used to great success already in Enrique Cadícamo's Nieblas del Riachuelo, where we find indeed some of the same words (“amarrado”, “alejarse”, "recalada", etc.). One may criticize Amarras for its overindulgence in self-pity, misery, and death wish as an exaggeration but one must also recognize that this is part of a tradition. To be sure, Amarras is genre poetry, that is, it draws on themes and a vocabulary that appear in tango texts time and again. Yet, it is also the work of a poet with a sense for drama. The text has a plot that takes the listener from the description of the protagonist's state of mind in the first strophe to his realization of the hopelessness of his situation in the second one. This is not unlike an aria of a 19th-century opera that tango poets and musicians, being children of Italian and Spanish immigrants, undoubtedly grew up with hearing. Vincenzo Bellini's dictum that “opera must make one weep, shudder, die, through singing” seems to resonate in many a tango poem.
2. The Poetry of Music
Our preceding discussion of the poetic form and content of Amarras went into considerable detail in order to assert our opinion that the poem has artistic value on its own—even without the music and its beautiful recording by Héctor Mauré and Juan D'Arienzo. Unfortunately, we cannot make a similarly detailed presentation of the music. We have not been able to locate a music score of the tango (let alone one of D'Arienzo's arrangement), or find any significant information about the composer, Carlos Marchisio. We are, therefore, entirely dependent on the audio recordings.
Amarrasis a typical tango canción, that is, it was composed not as a dance piece, but as a tango to be listened to. In a tango canción, the focus of attention is on the singer and the interpretation of the text, whereas the orchestra only provides the accompaniment. However, when dance orchestras performed a tango canción, the focus shifted from the interpretation of the text to the music. The singer of a dance music version never sang the entire text of the poem, only parts thereof. The orchestra was no longer just the accompanist of the singer, but it played significant portions of the piece on its own. Hence, the music arranger was free to reshuffle the order of music sections without destroying the coherence of the text. The artistic interest of dance orchestra versions lies in the musical arrangement of the score. A systematic study of these arrangements would indeed be highly interesting, if such scores still were to be found, but unfortunately this kind of investigation has been grossly neglected in Argentina.
Typical for a tango canción, the music of Amarras consists of two parts. Corresponding to the two strophes of the poem discussed above, they are here also identified as A and B. In a tango-canción-style performance, the orchestra would play a short introduction; then all strophes of the piece were sung with repetitions in text order. (For a tango-canción-style performance of Amarras see Héctor Mauré's recording with the orchestra of Héctor Varela. In this version the text is sung in its entirety, and the orchestra adapts to the singer's interpretation, disregarding, for example, the need to keep a steady rhythm, which is a priority in dance music.)
For dance orchestras it was not essential to play the piece in text order. Musical sections could be rearranged freely, but it was not mandatory to do so. Alberto Castillo's recording of Amarras, for example, consists of sections A and B played twice in order: the first time it is performed by the orchestra instrumentally, the second time it is sung by Castillo. The resulting repetition scheme is ABAB (the sung portions are given in boldface).
The recording by Juan D'Arienzo, on the other hand, begins with an instrumental version of B, which is followed by parts A and B being sung and, as the conclusion, by another instrumental repetition of part B. In this last repetition, the singer joins in again and sings the last stanza (B.3) with the same text as before. D'Arienzo's repetition scheme, therefore, is BAB+[B.1B.2B.3] (the sung portions are given in boldface).
The musical structure of Amarras corresponds to that of the poetry. Just as each strophe contains three stanzas, so the corresponding musical parts contain three sections each. The sections, in turn, are divided into two phrases, antecedent and consequent. With only three exceptions, all phrases are four measures long, which gives most sections a length of 8 measures.
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Example 7 : The musical structure of Amarras
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As the preceding table indicates, the second stanza of the first strophe, A.2, consists of two phrases of 3 measures, thus resulting in a shorter section of 6 measures. This stanza was mentioned above for establishing the image of a coal boat moored to shore, which the poet emphasized by intensifying the rhythm of the verses through internal rhymes. Thus, the musical setting, presenting two contracted musical phrases, turns out to be an imaginative complement, or better, a musical amplification of the poetic rhythm of this stanza.
The last stanza, B.3, is longest one of the piece. Unlike the “condensed” stanza A.2, in which both the antecedent and consequent phrases correspond in length, the consequent phrase of B.3 is twice as long as the antecedent one. This imbalance, which breaks with the model of homologous musical phrases followed in all the preceding stanzas, provides an intensification of expression of another kind.
It is this stanza that brings the piece textually and musically to a conclusion. Yet, in order to perceive a sense of finality at the end of a composition, all tension previously built up must be resolved. Such a resolution will impress the listener more emphatically if it does not occur suddenly but is deferred. This, it stands to argue, is what the extension of the last stanza is intended to bring about.
The irregular verse structure in the stanza B.3 could have been easily “normalized” if the two inner verses were dropped:
Example 8: Amarras, B.3
Ahora que sé que no vendrás
vago sin fin por la recova.
Busco valor para partir,
lejos de ti poder morir.
The result would have been a regular verse structure of two couplets and a syllable count (8, 9; 8, 8) more in line with the other stanzas. Yet, it would be a far less expressive. The insertion of two extra lines, rhythmically intensified through a repetition of the word “para”, strengthens the sensation of arrival and finality on the final two words, “poder morir” and turns the conclusion into a dramatic ending.
In musical terms, the consequent phrase of B.3 introduces the final cadence of the piece. It is the nature of a cadence to slow down the harmonic rhythm (that is, the rate of harmonic changes in the music). Through this deceleration, the expectation of the harmonic resolution is raised, and when the resolution actually takes place (that is, when the final chord eventually arrives), it conveys a sense of fulfillment and finality. One can say, therefore, that a musical cadence with its deceleration of harmonic change is analogous to extending a poetic structure as described above. Cadences are common musical practice and, in fact, this final cadence in Amarras is a very conventional affair. But it is fascinating, nevertheless, to see how poetry and music converged in Amarras to create a dramatic ending.
The attentive reader or listener will have noticed that the second strophe, B, is played three times in D'Arienzo's recording. In view of the careful preparation of the final cadence of part B, one must ask: Does the effect of “finality” not wear out with every repetition? At the beginning, part B is played by the orchestra alone and, having heard only half the piece, one would not expect it to end at this point. Then the singer sings both strophes, A and B, at which point the piece could logically end. However, the performance style makes it clear that the end of the piece has not been reached yet. At the harmonic resolution of the cadence to the words “poder morir”, Mauré sings the passage in a beautiful piano voice, descending from a' to the final note of the key, d'. The words are uttered quietly, like a private thought, giving the impression the mental anguish of the protagonist has not come to a conclusion.
By contrast, when Mauré repeats this passage at the end of the piece, he sings it in a strong forte and, like an operatic singer, ascends to the key note d'' an octave higher. This sound intensity alone, which is strengthened by a forcefully playing orchestra, will indicate to every listener and dancer, that the piece is finally coming to an end.
3. The Poetry of Dancing
As a conclusion to this article, we would like to include a danced interpretation of D'Arienzo's Amarras. Among the many performances that are available on Youtube, we have chosen a presentation by Silvana Anfossi and Alejandro Hermida. More than any other one, it has struck us not as a showcase of bravura but as a performance faithful to the music. That is to say, the formal aspects of Amarras noted in the preceding article find an echo in Anfossi's and Hermida's dance choreography. (In order to relate the choreography to the musical form, we have overlaid the video with the identifiers of the musical structure.)
By watching the video, even without the audio track, one can see that the choreography follows the musical phrasing of the piece. Most noticeable in this respect are the transitions between sections, that is, the strophes (A and B) and stanzas (A.1, A.2, etc). In poetry and music, the transition from one section to the next is marked by a caesura—stronger or weaker depending on its formal significance. This can be noticed in the dance performance as well. Unlike more showy choreographies, this one is based on the caminada. The choreography gets livelier and involves more dance figures when the cadences of the larger musical parts are imminent. With the cadence, a sequence of movements comes to a close and finds its resolution. The dancers collect their posture, and then continue to the next section.
Two aspects are, in our opinion, especially remarkable. One is the sense of calm and effortlessness, even serenity, of the dancers. Nothing appears rushed or out of step with the music. The other is the “unstagy” quality of the choreography. These two elements conspire in giving the performance an appearance of simplicity. While this aspect may diminish the performance in the eyes of those spectators who are fascinated by the tango escenario or similar styles, it makes it examplary of traditional tango dancing. It seems to us that this kind of show dance is as close as it gets to the ideal of social dancing. The dancers always keep a steady forward motion and stay most of the time “in the line”.
Rather than to venture into a detailed analysis of the choreography, however, we invite our readers to watch the superb performance of Silvana Anfossi and Alejandro Hermida, to do their own analysis of their choreography, and to compare it to other performances, if they like. For us, their dance is an extraordinary showcase of sensitivity to the music that discreetly weds dance and musical structure.
Or, one may simply enjoy watching an example of classic Argentine tango dancing to a celebrated performance of an extraordinary tango song.
Example 9: Amarras, danced by Silvana Anfossi and Alejandro Hermida
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