Angel G Villoldo

From Wind Repertory Project
Ángel G. Villoldo

Biography

Ángel Gregorio Villoldo Arroyo (16 February 1861, Buenos Aires, Argentina - 14 October 1919, Buenos Aires) was an Argentine tango composer and poet .

Villoldo earned his living through a wide variety of activities. He worked, among other things, as a typographer, as a circus clown and as a cuarteador (who used an additional horse to pull stuck carriages out of the mud or to help them travel up steep hills). He showed musical talent at an early age and played the piano and guitar, harmonica and violin. He appeared as an actor in the Rafetto circus, wrote some plays for the Teatro Roma and published poems and prose texts in magazines of his time such as Caras y caretas, Fray Mocho and PBT. As a singer, he accompanied himself on the guitar.

As a composer, Villoldo wrote works of various styles with such titles as Arrimate vida mía, Despedida, La promesa, Decime que sí, and Pobre cariñito mío, some of which were recorded in the early 20th century.

In 1889 he published a collection of cantos criollos with his own texts, and a collection of Argentine folk tunes for the 100th anniversary of Argentina's independence in 1916. In 1917, his guitar textbook was published by Casa America, in which he introduced a new teaching method using symbols, called Método América.

Villoldo composed the first of his more than 60 tangos, El Porteñito, in 1903. Outstanding among his tango compositions are El torito, Cuidado con los 50, Una fija, and, above all the legendary El Choclo . He also wrote texts for a number of works that were interpreted by other singers.

He bears the title of Father of Tango, a somewhat exaggerated qualification because there were many circumstances which originated our music. But his influence was so important in the beginnings and its development which made him deserve this designation.


Works for Winds


References