Bertolucci's conceit to structure the film loosely around the erotic duel that's at the heart of the Tango led him to seek a non-traditional musician to score it (Tango legend Astor Piazzolla was rumored to have been an early consideration). Once selected, the then-largely obscure Barbieri originally produced a series of brief, Tango-jazz fusion cues that functioned more as emotional punctuation than traditional underscore. Those musical snippets were later re-arranged and re-recorded by Oliver Nelson for the wildly successful soundtrack album; it would be another quarter century before Barbieri's own recordings were issued, albeit briefly.
Bertolucci's conceit to structure the film loosely around the erotic duel that's at the heart of the Tango led him to seek a non-traditional musician to score it (Tango legend Astor Piazzolla was rumored to have been an early consideration). Once selected, the then-largely obscure Barbieri originally produced a series of brief, Tango-jazz fusion cues that functioned more as emotional punctuation than traditional underscore. Those musical snippets were later re-arranged and re-recorded by Oliver Nelson for the wildly successful soundtrack album; it would be another quarter century before Barbieri's own recordings were issued, albeit briefly.