# Composers and Cats



## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Go on then!

I found this today:









And of course, there's this:









Which only goes to show, all the best composers liked cats (apart from Benjamin Britten, who was exceptional in many ways, felines and canines amongst them).

Any other composer+pet pictures out there to prove or disprove this thesis?


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Andrew Lloyd Webber LOVED "Cats" -

especially once it hit 3,000,000,000 in gross revenue.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

All the best composers except Brahms, I fear, who was the über-curmudgeonly exception. There are allegations that he used to shoot them from his window. I don't know if there's truth in those allegations and, to be frank as a lover of both cats and Brahms, if there is I'd rather not find out.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

John Cage with unidentified black cat.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Henry Cowell with unidentified striped tabby.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Philip Glass with unidentified black/white/calico.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

You get consigned to the hell-fires of Gehenna for the Lloyd-Webber pun!

But I love your other contributions, so you are absolved! Both are lovely: John Cage just looks so bloody happy! And Mr. Cowell looks exactly like I expect a cat-provider to look like  

Thank you. They make me happy.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Alan Hovhaness holding black cat which was later stolen by John Cage


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

Charles Wuorinen










Maurice Ravel


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Animal the Drummer said:


> All the best composers except Brahms, I fear, who was the über-curmudgeonly exception. There are allegations that he used to shoot them from his window. I don't know if there's truth in those allegations and, to be frank as a lover of both cats and Brahms, if there is I'd rather not find out.


Really?!

Good lord. I've suddenly gone orf the Deutsches Requiem!


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Jennifer Higdon with unidentified tabby.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

I'm not getting your Higdon and Hovhaness attachments: invalid, allegedly. But that's probably me.

*Edited to add: *Ignore the above. Both are now coming through just fine. Too eager clicking on my part, I expect. Higdon is lovely.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

John Rutter with "Jinx the Wonder Cat"


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

elgars ghost said:


> Charles Wuorinen
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Oooh. I fear for the cigarette on Ravel's cat! But the Wuorinen is lovely: they both look quite cuddly (but the cat wins it!)


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Dmitri Shostakovich with "Little Joe" - black and white calico.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

John Tavener and his cat "Smokey" - black body with off-set white paws.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Frank Zappa with black cat that he stole from John Cage who stole it from Alan Hovhaness.

Cat later claimed in interview - "Zappa and Cage each cost me at least three lives apiece."

==========================================================

I would have posted a photo of Wanda Landowska with her cat but all she ever composed were jingles and even I didn't think that counted.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

This guy wears one on his head. Can any other composing cat lover beat that?


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Is that Wuorinen? It looks like John Williams.

Cowell was apparently quite fond of his tabby:


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Charles Wuorinen









John Williams


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)




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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/latest/cats-composers-lookalikes/


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)




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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Music composed for cats:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/entertainment-arts-37708585


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Rossini must have had two:


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## Olias (Nov 18, 2010)

Apparently Debussy preferred cats to humans:

https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/0...ne-muses-of-claude-debussy-and-maurice-ravel/


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Olias said:


> Apparently Debussy preferred cats to humans:
> 
> https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/0...ne-muses-of-claude-debussy-and-maurice-ravel/


Well, he seems like a sound man!


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

NoCoPilot said:


> ...


I love all those pictures. Horowitz looks very happy! 
I don't know everyone else in your montage, but thank you. <-- scrub that, I worked it out! Thanks.

PS. If you've got pictures of composers and fish, spiders or what have you... I'm happy to see them all. Doesn't have to be just cats (though they are the ones that will make me go gooey).


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Composers and spiders? Sacre bleu!


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Olias said:


> Apparently Debussy preferred cats to humans


Obviously a man of discernment.


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

I have no pictures to contribute but this thread is delightful! Keep em coming!!


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)




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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)




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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

*Brahms cleared of serial cat slaying*
Johannes Brahms, bewhiskered composer of four symphonies, has been cleared of one of the most serious charges ever levelled at a musical genius - the accusation that he was a serial cat slayer.
For more than a century, cat lovers have accepted as true the allegation that Brahms slaughtered felines, transcribed the sounds of their dying moments and callously incorporated them in to his works.
But research proves that the foul calumny was almost certainly the work of Richard Wagner, a notoriously bitchy composer whose operas go on longer than one of the nine lives of an average mog. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/apr/12/highereducation.arts


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

What breed of dog, what breed of cat is the most 'composerly'?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

The Austrian novelist Karoline von Greiner Pichler had been a student of Mozart. She describes her former teacher in her Memoirs, published in 1843. "One day when I was sitting at the pianoforte playing the 'Non più andrai' from Figaro, Mozart, who was paying a visit to us, came up behind me; I must have been playing it to his satisfaction, for he hummed the melody as I played and beat the time on my shoulders; but then he suddenly moved a chair up, sat down, told me to carry on playing the bass, and began to improvise such wonderfully beautiful variations that everyone listened to the tones of the German Orpheus with bated breath. But then he suddenly tired of it, jumped up, and, in the mad mood which so often came over him, he began to leap over tables and chairs, miaow like a cat, and turn somersaults like an unruly boy …." (Quoted in Deutsch Mozart: A Documentary Biography, trans. Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble.)


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

In the future composers will have an AI cats who meow back any tune or measure you can think of, and ultra-intelligent AI dogs who will sit back and give their deeper personal interpretation of it, and often they will get into lengthy arguments with one another as you sit back watching, and you will take out your sketchbook and begin taking criticizing notes on their analyses, and they'll momentarily stop and stare at you wondering what they said wrong.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

In the future composers will tend the computers that create music and stream it into out heads to make us cheerful, hard working, and docile. Cats may or may not be involved.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Olias said:


> Rossini must have had two:


I was First Tom in that at a school concert back in the day.

In other news (mews?), one of my teachers at that school once described the Sibelius concerto as a "concerto for cat and orchestra".


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Glenn Gould and unidentified dog of dubious lineage -


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Dmitri Shostakovich, his daughter Galina, with their Airedale terrier "Tomka" - 1948

Shostakovich once said -

""I have a theory that dogs lead such short lives because they take everything so much to heart"?"

Shostakovich made the comment in 1947 when an interviewer came to the Shostakovich's home and found the great composer's Airedale terrier, Tomka, anxious and whining. Shostakovich explained that Tomka was distressed because the family was currently packing to go on a holiday.

In Korea, dogs tend to have short lives mainly due to their being "tasty".


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Kurt Weill


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Dmitri Shostakovich, his daughter Galina, and Galina's pet piglets "Kevin" and "Scott".

Shostakovich's nicknames for the two pigs were "Breakfast" and "Lunch".

He thought that this was hilarious... Galina, not so much.


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Edvard Grieg and his dog "Løvstakken" Breed type: "Heinz 57"


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## Shaughnessy (Dec 31, 2020)

Maria Callas and dogs...

There are more photos of Maria Callas and dogs than there are of any other artist.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mar...CYMaNL4XRtQbU7Jy4Bg&bih=969&biw=1903&hl=en-US


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## MusicInTheAir (Apr 21, 2007)

Cats and dogs are both wonderful animals. I've had a few that definitely liked music. Others had the attitude, okay that music is nice, but it's time to pay attention to me now. I love all the pictures of composers and musicians with their pets.

https://www.rts.ch/2013/09/13/13/01/5208738.image


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Mr. Snickerdoodles thought it was hilarious. Grieg, not so much.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

NoCoPilot said:


> Obviously a man of discernment.


Or something of a misanthrope, non?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

NoCoPilot said:


> Charles Wuorinen
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Not only do their appearances confuse me, I always mistake their music, too -- the one's for the other's: so embarrassing, really.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Sunburst Finish said:


> Glenn Gould and unidentified dog -
> 
> View attachment 149087


I suspect that's Gould's vocal coach.

I once had a dog who howled every time I played piano. Of course, unlike Glenn, I never did pick up the habit of howling myself while I played. Alas ... maybe if I had my Bach would sound better.


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