I love this piece! I first saw it in Scent of a Woman…. So incredibly beautiful, and thanks for the background info on it!

borgomani:

Carlos Gardel - Por Una Cabeza

This is quite possibly one of the most beautiful tango pieces I’ve ever heard. When I was 11 (I think) I watched a film with this song (no, not the Al Pacino one… I think it was Schindler’s List) and I asked my grandmother if she knew that song and she said she did and she had the LP of that singer, and it was Carlos Gardel. That song was to me so romantic and sad at the same time, the violin made it sound so melancholic and then my grandma explained the name of the song. She said that it was about a horse-track gambler who bet his money on the wrong horse, losing it by a head, therefore the title “Por Una Cabeza” (literally translated to “By A Head”). He actually compares the horse tracks with his love for women. Since that day all the romance and sadness in my head were replaced by the image of a man wearing beige hat and suit crying because his horse lost the race. Oh well… Reality sucks.