Composed 1935; 6 minutes

The title Por una Cabeza refers to horse racing and draws a bittersweet parallel between losing a bet and losing a woman. The tango song tells of a gambler who risks everything on a racehorse and loses—both the wager and the woman he adores. The phrase, meaning ‘by a head,’ describes the narrow margin of defeat. The tango, written in the last year of Gardel’s life, also carries a tragic legacy: composer-singer Carlos Gardel and his lyricist Alfredo Le Pera died together with all the members and associates of his band in a plane crash on June 24, 1935. At the time, Gardel was famous throughout the Americas and Europe for his recordings, radio broadcasts, and appearances in movies. In 1934, the 13-year-old Astor Piazzolla met and briefly worked with Gardel, his idol, the man who epitomized tango itself. Gardel invited him to tour with his band; his father thought otherwise—a wise call, given that the tour ended with that plane crash.

Por una Cabeza has been featured in many movies, capped by a celebrated dance scene in Scent of a Woman (1992), the opening nightclub sequence in an arrangement by John Williams in Schindler's List (1993), and in several scenes in True Lies (1994).