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Browse piano sheets by Ángel Gregorio Villoldo on Zen Virtual Piano. Ángel Gregorio Villoldo was born in 1861 in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas. Before dedicating himself to music, Villoldo held various jobs, including typographer, tram driver, circus clown, and journalist. He learned to play guitar and sing largely on his own. The circus clown and journalist jobs and his largely self-taught guitar and singing may point to a musician with a varied route into music. At the turn of the 20th century, Villoldo wrote comic songs and cuplés for local theatres, and he was a regular figure in the entertainment scene of Buenos Aires. Poet and lyricist Horacio Ferrer says Villoldo worked with actors including Pepe, Pablo Podestá, and Angelina Pagano. He supplied songs and sketches that their productions used. Many of his tangos and songs debuted in the theatre before entering sheet music and recording circuits. In the low cafés and joints, Villoldo sang stories to his own guitar, with a harmonica added, and the audiences there took heart from it. The theatres where his songs debuted and the cafés where he sang with guitar and harmonica may suggest that his work reached audiences in more than one kind of venue. In 1889, Villoldo published a compilation of cantos criollos, lyrics of his own meant to be sung with guitar. The Buenos Aires department store Gath & Chaves had Villoldo under contract in 1907. He went to Paris with Gobbi and Rodríguez, and they made pioneering tango recordings there, including "La Morocha" and "El Choclo". Todotango calls Villoldo the great transformer of the Spanish tanguillos, the cuplés, and the habaneras, turning those musics into a River Plate rhythm. In 1917, Villoldo wrote Método América, a modern method to learn guitar with symbols, published by the old Casa América. The 1889 lyrics meant to be sung with guitar and the 1917 guitar method may point to the instrument's steady place in Villoldo's work. Argentine Popular Songs, which Villoldo published in 1916, gathered other songs of deep national contents and marked the centennial of the declaration of the Independence. Newer tango composers and professional singers eclipsed Villoldo's popularity by the 1910s. His works nonetheless stayed in circulation. Villoldo died in Buenos Aires on 14 October 1919, at the age of 58. Villoldo is remembered as "the father of tango song," a songwriter who bridged the stage, the street, and the recording studio. The Paris recordings of 1907 and the continued circulation of his works in the 1910s may suggest songs that traveled beyond the theatres where many of them debuted.
Browse piano sheets by Ángel Gregorio Villoldo on Zen Virtual Piano.
Ángel Gregorio Villoldo was born in 1861 in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas. Before dedicating himself to music, Villoldo held various jobs, including typographer, tram driver, circus clown, and journalist. He learned to play guitar and sing largely on his own. The circus clown and journalist jobs and his largely self-taught guitar and singing may point to a musician with a varied route into music.
At the turn of the 20th century, Villoldo wrote comic songs and cuplés for local theatres, and he was a regular figure in the entertainment scene of Buenos Aires. Poet and lyricist Horacio Ferrer says Villoldo worked with actors including Pepe, Pablo Podestá, and Angelina Pagano. He supplied songs and sketches that their productions used. Many of his tangos and songs debuted in the theatre before entering sheet music and recording circuits. In the low cafés and joints, Villoldo sang stories to his own guitar, with a harmonica added, and the audiences there took heart from it. The theatres where his songs debuted and the cafés where he sang with guitar and harmonica may suggest that his work reached audiences in more than one kind of venue.
In 1889, Villoldo published a compilation of cantos criollos, lyrics of his own meant to be sung with guitar. The Buenos Aires department store Gath & Chaves had Villoldo under contract in 1907. He went to Paris with Gobbi and Rodríguez, and they made pioneering tango recordings there, including "La Morocha" and "El Choclo". Todotango calls Villoldo the great transformer of the Spanish tanguillos, the cuplés, and the habaneras, turning those musics into a River Plate rhythm. In 1917, Villoldo wrote Método América, a modern method to learn guitar with symbols, published by the old Casa América. The 1889 lyrics meant to be sung with guitar and the 1917 guitar method may point to the instrument's steady place in Villoldo's work.
Argentine Popular Songs, which Villoldo published in 1916, gathered other songs of deep national contents and marked the centennial of the declaration of the Independence. Newer tango composers and professional singers eclipsed Villoldo's popularity by the 1910s. His works nonetheless stayed in circulation. Villoldo died in Buenos Aires on 14 October 1919, at the age of 58. Villoldo is remembered as "the father of tango song," a songwriter who bridged the stage, the street, and the recording studio. The Paris recordings of 1907 and the continued circulation of his works in the 1910s may suggest songs that traveled beyond the theatres where many of them debuted.
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Ángel Gregorio Villoldo was born in 1861 in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas.
Before dedicating himself to music, Villoldo held various jobs, including typographer, tram driver, circus clown, and journalist. He learned to play guitar and sing largely on his own.
Villoldo went to Paris in 1907 with Gobbi and Rodríguez, on a contract from the Buenos Aires department store Gath & Chaves. The pioneering tango recordings they made there included "La Morocha" and "El Choclo".
Villoldo wrote Método América, a modern method to learn guitar with symbols, published by the old Casa América in 1917. His other writing included poems and prose for magazines such as Caras y caretas, Fray Mocho and P.B.T., plus stanzas for carnival costumed groups.