Tahiti Trot

[ostuni]

Does anyone know why Shostakovich called his wager-winning orchestration of 'Tea for Two' 'Tahiti Trot'?

[makropulos]

Does anyone know why Shostakovich called his wager-winning orchestration of 'Tea for Two' 'Tahiti Trot'?

According to Michael Kennedy (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, p. 730), it's because "Tahiti Trot" was the Russian title for the song.

[visualnickmos]

According to Michael Kennedy (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, p. 730), it's because "Tahiti Trot" was the Russian title for the song.

I'd read that it was not just the Russian title; it was the title of the tune when it was first composed, and the word 'Tea for two' was the title of the song that was set with it. For what my opinion is worth!

[ostuni]

But I thought Vincent Youmans wrote the song for 'No No Nanette' - was it really based on an original melody? Thanks for the Kennedy explanation - but I'm still wondering *why* the Russians would give it that name. Nothing at all 'South-sea-islandish' in its style, to my ears...

[ardcarp]

...this from Wiki:

In October 1927, the conductor Nikolai Malko challenged Dmitri Shostakovich to do an arrangement of a piece in 45 minutes. His "Tea for Two" arrangement, Opus 16, was first performed on 25 November 1928. It was incorporated into Tahiti Trot from his ballet The Golden Age first performed in 1929. Shostakovich wrote it in response to a challenge from conductor Nikolai Malko: after the two listened to the song on record at Malko's house, Malko bet 100 roubles that Shostakovich could not completely re-orchestrate the song from memory in under an hour. Shostakovich took him up and won, completing the orchestration in around 45 minutes

So Tahiti Trot was presumably an already existing dance sequence within the ballet.

PS It was used as an entr'acte for the ballet The Golden Age at the suggestion of conductor Aleksandr Gauk

[makropulos]

So Tahiti Trot was presumably an already existing dance sequence within the ballet.

PS It was used as an entr'acte for the ballet The Golden Age at the suggestion of conductor Aleksandr Gauk

My understanding is that Tahiti Trot was added as an *encore* number to The Golden Age - which is, after all, about a Soviet football team visiting a Western city - so, again, nothing much to do with Tahiti...

As for the Russians publishing the song with a completely different title from Youmans's original, I think that's quite common when songs or tunes are translated from one language to another.

In other words, Kennedy's simple explanation seems entirely plausible to me.

[ostuni]

Yes - as far as I can gather, the 'Tahiti Trot' title pre-dates Shostakovich's initial arrangement of it, and also its incorporation as an interlude in The Golden Age. And I suppose it keeps the alliteration of the original title - it's just that I couldn't see anything remotely Tahitian in the style of the tune...

[Nick Armstrong]

but I'm still wondering *why* the Russians would give it that name. Nothing at all 'South-sea-islandish' in its style, to my ears...

I've always assumed that it was just in the vogue of the early part of the century, when popular music titles involved linking a fancy-sounding word with the 'form' of the piece - like Joplin's 'Sunflower Slow Drag' or 'Rose Leaf Rag', which have nothing Sunflowery or Rosy about them... but there's a pleasant alliterative quality. So link (Fox)Trot with the exotic Tahiti and ... voilà

[ardcarp]

Mind you, a pot of tea for two in Atlantic City would be fairly exotic compared with a dish of cold borscht in Stalinist Moscow. Anyway, isn't it a Cha Cha...

[Don Petter]

I've always assumed that it was just in the vogue of the early part of the century, when popular music titles involved linking a fancy-sounding word with the 'form' of the piece - like Joplin's 'Sunflower Slow Drag' or 'Rose Leaf Rag', which have nothing Sunflowery or Rosy about them... but there's a pleasant alliterative quality. So link (Fox)Trot with the exotic Tahiti and ... voilà

I think you may be exactly right. There was at that time a great vogue for using names of exotic places for both their romantic associations and alliteration, and not just in popular song.

Examples that immediately come to mind include those of

Brecht - Couch Behar, Mandalay, Surabaya
Masefield - Nineveh, Ophir
Sitwell - Zanzibar, Cathay, Coromandel, Joppa