# Where are the the classical music cats?



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

By their beauty and quiet elegance, it seems to me that cats would be a natural inspiration - or at least companion - to classical music composers. Yet I can not think of a single appearance of the cat in either their works or biographies.

Am I missing something?


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

ribonucleic said:


> By their beauty and quiet elegance, it seems to me that cats would be a natural inspiration - or at least companion - to classical music composers. Yet I can not think of a single appearance of the cat in either their works or biographies.
> 
> Am I missing something?


Yes , you're missing cats :lol:


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Peter and the Wolf


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> Peter and the Wolf


Ah, yes.

With quite a variety of narrators to choose from!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_the_Wolf#Recordings


----------



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Have animals in general inspired much classical music?


----------



## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

Here they are:


----------



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I grew up with the Basil Rathbone/Leopold Stokowski recording of 1941. I have always been impressed by the sureness of Prokofiev's selections of instruments and motifs for the characters in Peter and the Wolf.


----------



## CypressWillow (Apr 2, 2013)

And here, Nora is actually credited:


----------



## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Well, there's always Andrew Lloyd-Webber....

:devil:


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

I see there are two "Similar Threads" below covering this. Sorry.


----------



## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Debussy:

"Debussy was often described as catlike in his physical manner. He was in fact a lover of cats, a hedonist who was quite the Bohemian and café-goer."

Ravel:

"The following year he retired to the Ile-de-France countryside, to a villa called Le Belvedere. There he wrote-though less prolifically than in his earlier career-and enjoyed gardening and entertaining his beloved Siamese cats."















Vaughn Williams:










Edit: yeah just found this thread.


----------



## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Alan Hovhaness wrote a piano sonata called "Fred the Cat".

The photo of Vaughan Williams reminds me of someone in a documentary about him (possibly Ursula, but I can't remember) recalling the older VW asleep with two or three cats perched on him, each on a separate fold of his ample abdomen.


----------



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Hey, aren't we all classical music cats?


----------



## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

science said:


> Have animals in general inspired much classical music?


Why, yes! For one, the poodle is an inspiration to plenty of Germans. You have for example Beethoven's Elegie auf den Tod eines Pudels. Goethe also loved his poodles. ClassicFM also had an article on it. To save having to look through a slideshow, I replicated it here:

1. L'histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant - Poulenc
2. The Red Pony - Copland
3. The Lamb - Tavener
4. Le merle noir - Messaien
5. The Bear - Walton
6. All we like sheep, Messiah - Handel
7. Die Fledermaus - Strauss II
8. Trout Quintet - Schubert
9. The Lark Ascending - Vaughan Williams
10. Carnival of the Animals - Saint-Saëns
11. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks - Mussorgsky
12. Bluebird - Stanford
13. The Frogs - Telemann
14. Sheep May Safely Graze - Bach
15. The Swan of Tuonela - Sibelius
16. 'Butterfly' Etude - Chopin
17. Dances With Wolves - Barry
18. The Turtle Dove - Vaughan Williams
19. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale - Handel
20. The Cunning Little Vixen - Janáček
21. The Curlew - Warlock
22. The Firebird - Stravinsky
23. Walking the Dog - Gershwin
24. The Wasps - Vaughan Williams
25. *Cat Duet - Rossini*
26. Flight of the Bumblebee - Rimsky-Korsakov
27. On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring - Delius
28. Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky
29. Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev
30. Crazy Dog - Barry

http://www.classicfm.com/discover/fast-and-friendly-guides/classical-music-inspired-animals/


----------



## violadude (May 2, 2011)

There's a song by Samuel Barber called "A Monk and His Cat" , part of the "Hermit Songs" collection.


----------



## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

The cat was often an explicitly erotic symbol say in 19th century France, which may be one of the reasons for its occasional absence.

Some examples here, though:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat_dans_la_musique

+
Satie: Chanson du Chat 



Poulenc: Chanson Bretonne http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=8785
Copland: I bought me a cat 



Copland: The cat and the mouse, piano piece 




EDIT: Henri Sauguet: Le Chat, after Baudelaire


----------



## Lyricus (Dec 11, 2015)

Ah, that makes sense, considering it's near-homophone.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

These here be 2 classical music cats, listening to their (scientifically backed!) classical cat music:






If cats get their own music, the I'd say cats are indeed a big part of music culture!


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

And then there is the famous Nora The Piano Cat for whom a concerto was written by Mindaugas Piecaitis - _CATcerto_. Here is a link to a performance of the work by Nora and the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra of Lithuania.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

:lol:


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

The 'For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry' section from Britten's _Rejoice in the Lamb_. The text was by Christopher Smart, an asylum inmate from the 18th century who benignly argued that his cat (and other creatures, including mice) are equally as entitled to be as near to God as pious humans...

_'For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. 
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his Way. 
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer...'_

'The Cat 'Sailor'' from Mussorgsky's song cycle _The Nursery_.

Henze's opera _The English Cat_ after a story by Balzac. All the characters in the opera are anthropomorphic cats apart from Louise, an anthropomorphic mouse.

Rawsthorne's _Practical Cats_, after T.S. Eliot just like the later work by the dreaded Lloyd-Webber.


----------



## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Becca said:


> And then there is the famous Nora The Piano Cat for whom a concerto was written by Mindaugas Piecaitis - _CATcerto_. Here is a link to a performance of the work by Nora and the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra of Lithuania.


God help me, I actually kind of like it.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Faustian said:


> God help me, I actually kind of like it.


Me too.

But will you like it when Mitsuko Uchida programs it?


----------



## Guest (Dec 13, 2015)

I think Biber's Sonata Representativa has a cat in it.


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Me too.
> 
> But will you like it when Mitsuko Uchida programs it?


Ahh but can Uchida do that head-roll on the keys with quite the same insouciance?


----------



## Herondale (May 9, 2013)

Composer and author E.T.A. Hoffmann went so far as to have his beloved tomcat Murr _Lebensansichten des Kater Murr_ ISNB 3-15-000153-6 (The Life and opinions of the Tomcat Murr ISBN 0-14-044631-1) write its own biography, where Hoffmann himself (by «mistake») also appears, as the composer Kreisler.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I think Stravinsky set _'The Owl & The Pussycat'_ to music.


----------



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

elgars ghost said:


> I think Stravinsky set _'The Owl & The Pussycat'_ to music.


He did indeed. It was his last completed work.


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Me too.
> 
> But will you like it when Mitsuko Uchida programs it?


Ms. Uchida could program 90 minutes of herself sitting down on various registers of the keyboard and I would go.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ribonucleic said:


> Ms. Uchida could program 90 minutes of herself sitting down on various registers of the keyboard and I would go.


Am I sensing that you'd like to sit on the keyboard with her?


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Am I sensing that you'd like to sit on the keyboard with her?


I like your sense of humour :cheers:


----------



## helenora (Sep 13, 2015)

Becca said:


> And then there is the famous Nora The Piano Cat for whom a concerto was written by Mindaugas Piecaitis - _CATcerto_. Here is a link to a performance of the work by Nora and the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra of Lithuania.


wonderful performance! Bravi interpreters!


----------



## manyene (Feb 7, 2015)

Sounds 'purrfect' to me.


----------



## ribonucleic (Aug 20, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Am I sensing that you'd like to sit on the keyboard with her?


We could perform Mozart K.237a - Sonata for Piano Four Buttocks.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ribonucleic said:


> We could perform Mozart K.237a - Sonata for Piano Four Buttocks.


Playing all the notes at once. How efficient. Depending on the size of the buttocks, of course.


----------



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

The theme for D.Scarlatti's piano sonata/fugue K.30 is supposedly based on the notes his cat pressed while dashing along the keyboard. So legend has it.


----------

