Classically Speaking

On the Internet, nobody may know you’re a dog – but when you’re a cat that plays piano, there might be a conductor on the other side of the world who has a gig for you.

Nora, a piano-playing cat from New Jersey, gained an online following that led to a small flurry of media attention in 2007.  Lithuanian conductor Mindaugas Piečaitis saw videos online of Nora at the piano, and he composed an orchestral accompaniment for her piano playing. The resulting piece (the Catcerto ) received its world premiere earlier this summer at the Klaipedia Concert Hall in Lithuania.

I wasn’t going to blog about it. I’ve been told about it through Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, and several blogs. I thought that the Catcerto had permeated every corner of the Internet, but I’ve been talking to a bunch of people who haven’t yet heard about this music. If you're one of them, stop giving me that strange look, and take a few minutes to watch and listen:

Maybe it’s a mania, a fad, just a meme. But a few minutes ago, I found myself humming part of the melody from this piece. When the orchestra picks up the themes created by Nora, it’s quite compelling. I find it a bit hopeful, and a bit sad. Nora is listening so intently to the keys on that piano. If she and the orchestra met, they wouldn’t be able to create this music together. Music can be a form of communication, but Nora is separated from the other musicians by time, space, and species. 

Well, barring all that, it is cute.

On July 26, music writer, critic, teacher, and program annotator Michael Steinberg died at the age of 80. 

His writing about music is amazing – I recommend reading his music listening guides  The Symphony,   The Concerto, and Choral Masterworks. His essays are also featured in For the Love of Music , which I’m just starting to read. These books are all available at my local library; you can probably also find them in a library near you.

For more about Steinberg, read "Michael Steinberg Remembered," by Mark Swed, and listen to Steinberg himself in the NPR piece “An Appreciation of the Symphony.”

I have just one personal note to add to all the tributes already out there. 

Michael Steinberg spoke to several classes at Indiana University when I was a student there, and I was very taken with the way he spoke and wrote about music. I was especially inspired by him telling us how he got into writing about music.

He studied musicology at Princeton, and he received a Fulbright scholarship to study in Italy. Before leaving for Italy, Steinberg wrote to the New York Times, to let them know he’d be there – in case they wanted any reviews. 

When he got there, he reported to the local bureau, and he was sent out to write 400 words about a concert. They liked what he wrote, and other assignments followed. From there he went on to write reviews and program notes and share his knowledge and love of music with the world. 

He knew his music, he wrote wonderfully, and he went for it. 

The same week, choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham passed away at 90.  He was a towering figure in the dance world, and he also left a mark on the world of avant-garde classical music through collaborations with composer John Cage.  The Mediavore has a collection of remembrances of Merce Cunningham. 

Since I do not want to dwell too much on loss, let's end with a story of musical discovery.

Two compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were recently discovered. Well, they were never really lost; they just weren’t attributed to the right Mozart. The manuscripts were in Leopold Mozart’s handwriting, so it was reasonably assumed that they were by Leopold (Wolfgang’s father).

Dr. Ulrich Leisinger analyzed the music and the handwriting, and he has determined that these two pieces were composed by the young Wolfgang at the keyboard, while his father notated what he played. The discovery was announced July 23rd, and the music was performed this past Sunday (August 2nd) at a special press conference. 

You can hear recordings of these pieces and view reproductions of the manuscripts at the International Mozarteum Foundation’s site.  Performance Today's site also has the performances along with comments by Mozart scholar Neal Zaslaw.