ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the tango dance music of the epoca de oro as performed and recorded by many orchestras from the mid-1930s to 1950s and taken up again by tango musicians since the 1990s. Tango music has many sub-genres and styles, with different purposes, artistic approaches, and audiences. One of the many possible options for tango music is playing music for social tango dancing, based on the historical practice of tango music and dance in the first half of the twentieth century: the epoca de oro of tango in Argentina. The melody is the starting point and foundation of a tango music piece: melody “reigns supreme in tango texture”. Melodies are composed of relatively short motives which are combined into phrases of mostly eight (also four, or sixteen) bars with a cadence at the end. Harmonies used in tango belong to the functional major–minor tonal system.
