Horacio Ferrer is to contemporary tango what Ira Gershwin is to Tin Pan Alley - and maybe more.

He is a recognized poet, a tango lyricist of formidable talent, and a noted historian — of promethean output — of Argentine tango music and dance. His best-known lyrics are those for "Chiquilín de Bachín," which was composed by Astor Piazzolla. It is an instantly recognizable tango waltz, a true modern classic. Horacio wrote the lyrics to a number of other Piazzolla tangos, as well as the libretto to Piazzolla's truly unique opera María de Buenos Aires. The two men were very close friends.

I had the pleasure of seeing María de Buenos Aires a few years ago in Berkeley, California, and joining in on the long, standing ovation at the end. The musical ensemble of bandoneón, strings, percussion, and singers was led by Gidon Kremer, the renowned Latvian concert violinist who is also a devoted Piazzolla fan. The spoken portion of the opera, which is a very important element of it, was handled by Horacio himself.

I met with him the day before the performance. He is a smallish man with a well-trimmed moustache and goatee. He was dressed in a well-ironed white shirt buttoned to the throat, a smoothly pressed white wool scarf, a navy-blue blazer, and black slacks. A small red rose flourished from his lapel.

When you meet him, the first thing you notice about Horacio is his voice, which has the depth and color of that of a very fine actor.

Horacio: (arranging the scarf about his neck) My voice has tightened up so much, Terry, that it sounds like a double base, when really it's more like a violin-cello. (Laughter)

Terry: I'm here today with Horacio Ferrer, the most famous man in the world - the world of the tango, that is, and I have a half-dozen questions that I'd like to ask you.

Horacio: (Laughter) To which I'd very much like to respond.

Terry: I think it's not very usual to find a popular music tradition that attracts lyricists of such high quality as the tango has attracted, poets like Discépolo, Manzí, Borges, Blázques, Espósito, and yourself. Why in your opinion has the tango brought in poets of such quality?

Horacio: At the very center of the question, the "why" of the tango's being so attractive to poets is, I think, the fact that the tango is itself entirely poetic. The music is poetic, the dance is poetic, the singing is poetic, and the world from which the tango evolves is poetic. It's the world of the night, it's the bohemian world where money has little importance, and to be sure where love has a great deal of importance, triumphant love or destroyed love, the affections, distant affection, a love of looking back through space and time.

So they're all colors taken from the poetic palette. And besides, the tango is one of the few song-forms in this century that undertakes not only a lyric excursion but a reflective one as well. The tango thinks. The tango thinks about the truth without claiming to modify it. It simply meditates upon it, which is also part of poetry.