Tchaikovsky (song)
Tchaikovsky is a patter song with the lyrics by Ira Gershwin and music Kurt Weill. The song is part of the musical Lady in the Dark and was on January 23, 1941 for the first time performed by Danny Kaye on stage.
Song
In the musical Lady in the Dark is the Lady in a dream circus in court because they do not want to redeem a promise of marriage. After her song I never gave him my word asks the singing in the vocal range baritone ringmaster who had the melody that was just sung composed. On the answer Tchaikovsky! he responds, with Tchaikovsky? I love Russian composers and begins an enumeration of Russian composers. The text is a staccatohaft carried forward list of fifty names of composers who have a Russian sound. In the form of patter songs, the names are heruntergerattert in a chant. The song has lyrics Gershwin's still a six-line introduction ( I may make known? ) And on four stanzas with four lines of verse. It lists each row of four or five composers name until in the last stanza, the singer begins to repeat itself in the name and in the last lines concludes that it is now for him and the audience on stage enough.
Weill is a tempo marking Allegro barbaro, 152 (MM), before, for the singer, the statement is not too fast and clearly expressed and for the piano in Albert Szirmais Piano semper staccato. The lecture ends in a crescendo fortissimo and the other singers fall towards the end of one of the two repeated names Stravinsky and Kvoschinsky.
Some of the announced as " Russians " men (women are missing), are not Russians, but they are of Polish origin, as Moniuszko, Maliszewski and Godowsky, from other parts of the Russian Empire such as Ukraine or were as Vernon Duke and Igor Markevitch already in emigrated young age. The title of the song refers to the Russian romantic composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Gershwin used in his poem the usual in the German language spelling " Tchaikovsky " instead of the English spelling, or a scientific transliteration, also for the other names considered more of a poetic writing, which must be made by the singer phonetically match, however, even if it is only in rhythm and the rhymes.
Ira Gershwin, the libretto for Lady in the Dark wrote in 1941, had some of his poems under the pseudonym Arthur Francis published because it was registered in the public only as a librettist of his brother George Gershwin. Under this pseudonym this essay was originally printed in a student newspaper, the self- plagiarism was uncovered by Gershwin later.
Kaye had the ambition to make the number more quickly and brought it to a time less than one minute. In the musical, the song but not a cappella work was presented. Other singers have made the song to a parade number with which they can prove their speaking speed.
In a cabaret show Mark Nadler has dismantled in 2003 the song into its components and linked each of the fifty names with a cabaret text.
Composers
List of composers names in the form of Gershwin piano score and in their sequence in the song.
Malichevsky, Rubinstein, Arensky, Tchaikovsky, Sapelnikoff, Dmitrieff, Tcherepnin, Kryjanowsky, Godowsky, Arteiboucheff, Moniuszko, Akimenko, Solovieff, Prokofieff, Tiomkin, Korestchenko, Glinka, Winkler, Dmitry Bortniansky, Rebikoff, Ilyinsky, Medtner, Balakireff, Zolotareff, Kvoschinsky, Sokoloff, Kopyloff, Dukelsky, Klenofsky, Shostakovitsch, Borodine, Gliere, Nowakofski, Liadoff, Karganoff, Markievitch, Panchenko, Dargomyzski, Stcherbatcheff, Skriabine, Vasilenko, Stravinsky, Rimsky- Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Gretchaninoff, Glazounoff, Caesar Cui, Kalinikoff, Rachmaninoff, Rumshinsky.
Recordings
- Mark W. Dorrell: Lady in the Dark. . The Royal National Theatre, 1997 Singer of Russel Paxton ( Ringmaster ): James Dreyfus