Born in Mar del Plata, Piazzolla immigrated to New York with his family, where he grew up on the Lower East Side. Sports and other activities interested him far more than did the tango, the music of his father. The gift of a bandoneón began to change that, however.

“The first bandoneón that I had, my Papa gave me when I was eight years old,” Piazzolla recalled in one version of the event, although he also said it was when he was nine. “He brought it wrapped in a box, and I was happy, believing that it was the skates that I had asked for many times. That was deceptive, however. In place of the skates, I encountered an apparatus that I had never seen in my life. Papa sat himself on a chair, placed the thing between my arms, and said to me: ‘Astor, this is the instrument of the tango, I want you to learn to play it.’ My first reaction was to complain. The tango was the music that he listened to almost every night when he returned from work, and which I did not like."

He was 16 years old when his family returned to Argentina, and he was soon working regularly in the best tango orchestras, including that of Aníbal Troilo. In 1944 Piazzolla left the Troilo band to form his own ensemble, the Orquesta del 46, to play his own compositions. A symphony he composed in 1954 for the Buenos Aires Philharmonic earned him a scholarship to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, who advised him to cultivate the tango as his true mode of expression. This he did with increasing assurance and originality after returning to Argentina the following year. He formed the Octeto Buenos Aires and then the Quinteto Nuevo Tango as the performing vehicles for his compositions, working out of his own club.

From the 1960s comes La muerte del ángel (from a series of 'angel' pieces), one of the distinctive pieces with which Piazzolla shook the conservative world of tango. “Nuevo tango = tango + tragedy + comedy + whorehouse” was an equation Piazzolla used to define his new direction. To that could be added greater harmonic sophistication—chromatic lines over chains of dominant sequences, much like baroque ground bass forms—and an elusive jazz swing.

– John Henken