Tchaikovsky (song)

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Tchaikovsky and Other Russians is a patter song first performed by American comedian Danny Kaye in the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark with lyric by Ira Gershwin and music by Kurt Weill. Gershwin also used the alternate spelling "Tschaikowsky".

Although Weill's musical contributions are notable elsewhere throughout Lady in the Dark (and in many other works), Tchaikovsky and Other Russians is not a song in the normal sense of the term: it is actually a rhyming list of fifty Russian composers' names, which Kaye rattled off (in a speaking, not singing, voice) as rapidly as possible. At each performance, Kaye tried to break his previous speed record for reciting this song: consequently, it was intended to be recited a capella (without music), as the orchestra could not possibly keep up with him. Weill provided a melody for the song's introduction, but the main part of the song (the list of Russian names) has no music.

It could be claimed that Ira Gershwin "cheated" in the construction of this lyric, since several of the "Russian" composers listed in this song are actually Russian-Americans, whose names Gershwin has altered for the purposes of his lyric. For example, one of the supposed Russian composers mentioned in this song is someone named "Dukelsky": this is actually the birth name of Vernon Duke, an American composer of Russian ancestry.

Ira Gershwin began his career writing lyrics for his brother George Gershwin. Ira, the more self-effacing of the Gershwin brothers, was concerned that music publishers might think that George had chosen him as lyricist on the basis of nepotism rather than talent, so Ira originally chose to write lyrics under the pseudonym "Arthur Francis" (derived from the names of his other brother Arthur and his sister Frances).

The song was originally a nonsense poem which Ira Gershwin had published in a college newspaper (under the name "Arthur Francis") in his student days. Decades later, in his memoir Lyrics on Several Occasions, Ira Gershwin expressed the hope that someone might accuse him of plagiarizing his song "Tchaikovsky" from the collegiate poem published by Arthur Francis ... so that he could reveal that he and Arthur Francis were the same person.

Kaye's stage performance as a gay fashion photographer, and particularly his showstopping performance of Tchaikovsky and Other Russians in which he dashed through the names of 50 Russian composers in 39 seconds, made him a star.