Chicago Chorale’s big project this winter is learning and presenting Misa a Buenos Aires, also called Misa Tango. Argentine composer Martín Palmeri (b.1965) composed the work between September 1995 and April 1996; the first performance was given on August 17, 1996 at Teatro Broadway in Buenos Aires by the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Cuba, the Choir of the Law Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires, and the Polyphonic Choir of the City of Vicente López (choirs to which the work is dedicated).
Misa Tango is a Latin choral mass utilizing the harmonies, syncopated rhythms, and sensual qualities of tango, the national music and dance of Argentina. Structurally, Misa Tango consists of the same movements as the traditional Latin mass— Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. But the composer introduces the emblematic instrument of tango, the bandoneon, along with a string orchestra (violins, viola, cello and double bass) and piano. A mezzo-soprano solo part punctuates the work, the bulk of which is sung by a mixed choir.
Palmeri’s Misa was relatively unknown until 2013, when it was performed in Rome, at the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, during the International Festival of Music and Sacred Art in the Vatican. The organizers chose Misa Tango specifically to pay tribute to the elevation of the former cardinal of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis in 2013. The composer writes, ”This work was written with the intention of offering my choirs a choral symphonic work that could bring us closer to the tango repertoire. Indeed, working with my choirs, I have found how difficult and complex the interpretation of traditional tangos by choirs is. This work is therefore a tribute to choirs and tango as well as to its creators. But it is also the result of a spontaneous production, the fruit of my experience as a choir director, pianist and tango arranger.”
The seeds of tango originated in present-day Angola, in Southwest Africa; they were taken to South America during the 17th and 18th centuries by people who had been sold as slaves, mainly by Portuguese slave traders. The same people who practiced “Candombe”, the musical-religious dance expression that became an essential component in the genesis of Argentine tango, colonized Brazil, Cuba, and the Río de la Plata region of Argentina. Over time, elements of music and dance from Europe, especially Italy, Spain, and Portugal, as well as from the native indigenous peoples, fused with this African music, particularly in the lower-class districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The tango as we know it today evolved about 1880 in dance halls and perhaps brothels in Buenos Aires, where it initially had a disreputable reputation, as a crude, socially unsettling, sexually suggestive expression of the lower classes. By the early 1900s, however, the tango had become socially acceptable, and moved back across the Atlantic Ocean; by the outbreak of WWI, it was a craze in fashionable, upper-class European circles. The first tango music by known composers was published in 1910.
Beginning in the 1950s, composers and dancers of tango began experimenting with new styles, harmonic practices, and instrumentation. Most important among these musicians was Astor Piazzolla (1933-92), who incorporated elements from jazz and classical music in his compositions, shattering the glass ceiling that had been forcing tango into a tighter, more stylized, less creative and improvisatory mode, both musically and in terms of dance performance. With the support and collaboration of other tango musicians, Piazzolla brought the art of tango music to the forefront, opening the door for, among others, Martín Palmeri, to incorporate the special and unique elements of tango into other genres.
Chorale is having a fabulous time working on Misa Tango. We have never attempted anything like this before, and we find the challenge exhilarating and rewarding. This is immensely attractive music; but more than that, it bridges the gap between “popular” music and “classical” music without drawing attention to the gap. Palmeri has accomplished a wonderful thing.