Incitation to Desire (Tango) (1984)

Incitation to Desire (Tango), for piano (1984), was written for Yvar Mikhashoff who first performed it at the

North American New Music Festival in Buffalo on April 14, 1985 and whose recording of it appears on a New

Albion Release in 1995. It was originally published by Quadrivium Music Press as part of the International

Tango Collection which included 88 composers as varied as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Virgil

Thomson. (The Skaneateles Festival commissioned a version--Edition Peters No. 67596a--for clarinet, horn,

violin, violoncello, percussion and piano which was premiered on September 3, 1993 and is dedicated to pianist

Robert Weirich and cellist Lindsay Groves.) It is in one short movement starting with a brief, flashy introduction,

then the tango itself entitled "In the style of a tango-canci6n" (originally a vocal form with instrumental

accompaniment and strong sentimental character) with abstracted characteristic habanera rhythmic patterns in

2/4 meter and sentimental melody, and then a brief, driving coda. The title comes from H. C. Colles' "Tango"

entry in the Fifth Volume of the 1944 Third Edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians: "The

movements of the dance are less presentable to a polite audience than those of the Habafiera, and as now

performed in the cafes chantants of Madrid and other cities of Spain the Tango has become nothing but an

incitation to desire."