Prokofiev: Peter And The Wolf; Saint-Saëns: Carnival Of The Animals CD

' The Archbishop of Lyons said: ' This abominable dance kills virtue, and gives rein to every appetite.

' 'We condemn the dance of foreign origin known as the Tango, which by its lascivious nature offends morality' proclaimed the Archbishop of Paris. Concerning 'Tango Teas' Father Bernard Vaughan commented: ' It is not what happens at a Tango Tea that so much matters as what happens after it. I have been too long with human nature not to know that, like a powder magazine, it had better be kept as far as possible fireproof.

' The Atlanta Bible conference declared that the Tango is a revision to the ape, and thereby a confirmation of Darwin's theory. An article in the New York Times spoke of the curative powers of the dance relating an individual's disappearance of indigestion after learning the Tango. At the peak of anti-Tango agitation in 1914, the Argentine Ambassador declared that 'the Tango is a dance peculiar to the houses of ill fame in Buenos Aires, and is never cultivated at respectable gatherings.

'The Milonga and the Habanera provide the roots for the Tango. There is speculation as to the origins of the Iberian or Tango de Andalusia. Argentina was populated predominately during the last two centuries by immigrants from Galicia or Northwestern Spain. It is accepted that the Tango was brought back to Spain from Argentina and converted into the Andalusian derivative. The Milonga is a much older Argentinean dance that originated as a song among the lower social strata of Buenos Aires. It held its popularity until it was absorbed by the Tango around the turn of the century (c 1900) yet has remained in use today and is still distinguishable from its illustrious offspring. Both Tango and Milonga get their characteristic swing or lilt from the Cuban Habanera. This rhythm, in two, consists of dotted eighth, sixteenth and two eighths with a strong emphasis on two. The Milonga puts more emphasis on one, the fourth sixteenth of one, and the up beat of two. On this recording I have included works that represent each of these three passionate forms.

Upon its debut the Waltz (or Vals) was almost universally opposed as well. Burney in Rees's Cyclopaedia (c 1805) states: 'The verb walsen, whence this word is derived, implies to roll, wallow, welter, tumble down, or roll in the dirt or mire. What analogy there may be between these acceptations and the dance, we pretend not to say; but having seen it performed by a select party of foreigners, we could not help reflecting on how uneasy an English mother would be to see her daughter so familiarly treated, and still more to witness the obliging manner in which the freedom is returned by the females.