Research on Argentine tango has primarily focused on the dance or the lyrics. It has often been overlooked that tango music also represents an independent and historically evolved dimension of expression, which interacts in complex ways with the choreographic and poetic phenomena of tango. This study now places tango music in the foreground for the first time and fulfills a dual need: First, it presents the development of tango music (1900-1960), including genre-specific means and production methods. The analysis of important personal styles (including those of Osvaldo Pugliese and Astor Piazzolla) completes this examination of the tango tradition. Following this, contemporary compositions are related to this tradition to question how today's tango generation engages with it.