Trepak: A Song History

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A trepak is a fiery folk dance for men that features the prisiadka, a step in which the dancer flings out his legs; Merriam-Webster classes it as Ukrainian, though the name comes from a Russian verb meaning to beat or tap.[1] Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky titled his version "Trepak: Russian Dance" and placed it in the Act II divertissement of The Nutcracker as No. 12d, the fourth in a run of national dances that follows Chocolate (Spanish), Coffee (Arabian) and Tea (Chinese) in the palace of the Kingdom of Sweets.[2] He had begun it in early 1891 among sketches for dances in Act I, where some of his sketch titles call it a clown's dance, but when Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the Imperial Theatres, ruled out dancing in that act, Tchaikovsky thought the dances would probably move to Act II, and the Trepak did.[2] The finished number runs just 84 bars, marked Tempo di Trepak, molto vivace and ending Prestissimo, and it was first danced when Lev Ivanov's production opened at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on 18 December 1892 (6 December Old Style), with Riccardo Drigo conducting.[2]

Pastel of three women in Ukrainian folk costume with flower headdresses and red boots, dancing in a field

Edgar Degas, Dancers in Ukrainian Dress, charcoal and pastel on tracing paper, 1899. Dancers in Ukrainian dress, drawn in 1899, shown for the folk dance the trepak is named for; the drawing has no connection to Tchaikovsky's music.

Audiences heard the Trepak months before they saw it danced: it is one of the six characteristic dances in the concert suite that Tchaikovsky drew from the ballet and conducted himself in St Petersburg on 19 March 1892 (7 March Old Style), and it stands there in G major.[3] The suite won favor quickly, and in 1940 Disney's Fantasia, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, gave the suite's music to an animated cast of fish, fairies and plants.[3][4] On the dulcimer, Butch Ross includes the Trepak in The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book, a Fingers Of Steel download of playful holiday tab, where the tune appears in four parts: the main melody, a baritone part, a bass dulcimer part and a version for a dulcimer tuned DGdd.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Trepak"

Sources

  1. Merriam-Webster: "Trepak".
  2. Tchaikovsky Research: "The Nutcracker".
  3. Tchaikovsky Research: "The Nutcracker (suite)".
  4. Britannica: "Fantasia".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Butch Ross, The Crash Bang Dulcimer Christmas Book".
  6. Image: Edgar Degas, Dancers in Ukrainian Dress, charcoal and pastel on tracing paper, 1899. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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