The Visceral Sextet, the Orchestra with our National Academy of Tango
We are honored to have the Visceral Sextet as a base orchestra in all our activities.
A young group of talents who are not only virtuous but excellent people. His wide musical repertoire respects the spirit of each era, composer and Maestro creator of this unique Art with authority and rigor.
It is noteworthy that it is a DANCE orchestra, concerned like all the most famous groups of the past, in bringing the treasures of our Tango to the feet of the dancers, for which Tango was created.
Regarding their ability to recreate and convey to us the stylistic characteristics of various consecrated orchestras, they also offer valuable workshops on the «Fundamental Styles of Tango». Here we transliterate some details from their website:
«We offer through our workshop «Fundamental Styles of Tango» the possibility of approaching and investigating the characteristics of each of the orchestral and compositional styles that marked the most notable trends in the history of Tango.
The course is especially aimed at instrumentalists and arrangers, as well as those interested in the genre even without formal music studies. We also contemplate the possibility of attending the workshop for Tango dancers and teachers who wish to deepen their musical and stylistic knowledge, to have more tools applicable to their profession.
For this, we propose a detailed exposition of the instrumental and stylistic resources that are evident in the different orchestras of the golden age of Tango, resorting to a theoretical introduction, followed by a practical demonstration in which short musical fragments will be interpreted, explaining the use of the previously described resources.
The class is open to all questions and concerns that may arise among the attendees, which will seek to be resolved at the time, also inviting the instrumentalist musicians to actively participate in the performance of their instrument by joining the group.
PROGRAM
The Workshop begins with a brief historical review about the origins of Tango and how the traditional grouping of Orquesta Típica came to be consolidated. Next, the presentation of the following styles of Tango will be given:
– Orquesta de Aníbal Troilo
– Orquesta de Juan D’arienzo
– Orquesta de Carlos Di Sarli
– Orquesta de Osvaldo Pugliese
– Quinteto Real de Horacio Salgán
– Quinteto de Astor Piazzolla
We would like to be sure, regarding this last topic, that all dancers understand the importance of knowing the «Marking Models» and the «Fundamental Styles of Tango».
Not only because this knowledge is essential to be qualified in our «European School of Tango» in any of its specialties, but also because it is definitely essential to know why an orchestra sounds the way it does and is different from the others. We are the dancers, we are the first line of interpretation outside the orchestra. We have to KNOW the music properly.
We must master that aspect of the music because as dancers we must interpret it.
Although this is not the object of this chapter because we also deal with it extensively in others on this website and in our Channels, it will be opportune to consider it from a bird’s eye view once again.
The Styles of Tango dance have to do with the historical periods of its musical evolution and that evolution is reflected in the characteristics of what would be «the fundamental Styles of Tango»
There is a lot of confusion about this, due in part to widespread misinformation and a lot of unsubstantiated speculation. The dancers created steps and resources ABOUT THE MUSIC and other aspects that we will see in due course. About the music and those dial models, not before her.
Access to these marking models did not have to be something academic, far from it, but those creators intuitively recognized it, thus their ways of interpreting that music that ended up resisting the passage of time as the famous «mother figures» became points of reference and recognized as Styles.
There has been a great additional danger to many others that threatened (and probably threaten) Tango, which is the disappearance of the great orchestras and their directors.
Understanding and explaining in this way the form and why those orchestras that came to have a clearly recognizable style, with the mystery that implies, sounded as they did, was on the verge of disappearing, just as today we do not know exactly how «El Mocho» danced. and many like him, for example.
But in the case of orchestras we have the infinite fortune that musicians such as Ignacio Varchausky and the Tango School Orchestra founded by him, and Master conductors such as Emilio Balcarce, Víctor Llavallén etc, and even the Sexteto Viceral orchestra present here and others, unravel all those mysteries corresponding to the aforementioned orchestras, among others, and turn the study of each one into a School and guarantee for all posterity that those secrets are not lost.
If I give the music scores of for example a song by Gobbi or Di Sarli to one of those wonderful Symphony Orchestras and ask them to play that Tango sounding like him, will they be able to do it?
NO. Unbelievable but true. You have to know a multitude of secrets, the articulations, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
In Tango you don’t play what is in the music score.
We don’t dance «as it is in the score» either. Ours is no less complex. We should know.
Personally, I was very concerned about the subject, as well as about the fact that those already old dancers, Masters and creators that I was able to meet in their day, unintentionally or unintentionally took the secrets of their art to the grave, and that is why I decided to rescue them until where possible.
So if we have the rare opportunity and the undeniable privilege of being able to know for the first time all about those «fundamental styles and models of orchestral marking», the research of which no one had thought of before, and we can apply them to our dance, we should NOT lose her
We will finally be able to dance with propriety, security and joy whatever the musicalization of a Milonga or the challenge of an artistic stage project proposes to us.
El ignorar ésto hace que se vean muchas veces parejas tratando de aplicar por ejemplo a un pasaje musical de D´Arienzo de los años 30 conceptos coreográficos del «Tango nuevo» o cosas así.
Hacerlo no es una forma de «creatividad u originalidad»; es desconocimiento de todo un lenguaje que hace a algo ser lo que es.
About the Sextet, in this their web page you will be able to know the information about each one of its members, their programs, trajectories and contact.