And now for something completely different: A video recreation of Arnold Schoenberg’s three-part Drei Klavierstücke, an early piece of “atonal” music, a term that means “sounding like cats wandering aimlessly on a keyboard.”
You can see all three videos here, along with a list of videos used, side-by-side comparison of the cat version to a real recording, and generally more proof than you’ll ever need that humans have more time than they know what to do with.
It’s, um, very deep, Ian F.
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Okay, now I’m ready for Four, thirty-three!!
Clearly these kittehs need lessons from Nora!
I can’t believe I spent almost 3 minutes watching cats playing pianos….
OH WAIT YES I CAN! Lolololol…. <3
Aladdin Sane would be proud.
Nevertheless, felines, there can only be one Keyboard Cat (RIP).
Kitties=cute
music=headache
cute > headache
all’s well that ends well
This is more than deep, NOMTOM. This is surreal. And wonderful.
Poor Arnold Schoenberg. After a while you get to feel sorry for the guy. I do, anyway. Congrats, NTMTOM for correctly identifying Drei Klavierstücke (1909) as atonal; twelve-tone didn’t start for several more years. When you study music seriously, as I did, you get to know these pieces. And after awhile, they don’t sound weird anymore (actually, they never did to me, but I’m weird).
[speechlessness]
LOL There is some serious cat/piano love going on there.
Our Tuffy cats favorite time to play the piano was at 3 AM.
Let me tell you nothing wakes you up faster than kitty on the keyboard at 3 AM.
That was… not immediately added to my iTunes playlist.
No offense.
Just sayin’.
Hmm, I think this is based on the Catatonic Scale, with a little diversion towards the LightPentatonic scale in the middle.
[
- Ed.]
PS My Stinky(RB) was an avid late-night pianist. Dante wants to avoid walking on the keyboard, but he like sitting next to me on the bench.
Good heavens, Theresa. We need lessons from you, stat. Every time our musical director/organist hits a weird chord in the sung masses on Sunday mornings, we all nod wisely from the choir stalls and murmur “Schoenberg variation, of course”.
Kinda tickled my ovaries, but not my ivories.
um…..Mike…..
was that a Title/ caption or was it a thesis statement?
perhaps you can obtain college credits for all that philosophical sweatin’ to the Atonals??
Leslie (NTA) – Thank you! I wasn’t gonna say it, but, that *is* the worst CO post title EVAR!!!
LOL! (mwah NOMTOM)
[I dunno; to my eye, there's a glaring lack of Numa Numa and/or bacon... - Ed.]
@Bookmonstercats, poor Arnold! He really believed his music would become widely accepted. My ex-BF wrote his dissertation on a Schoenberg opera he wrote as a “light entertainment.”
Why accept the rest when you can have the best?
A conductor in Lithuania wrote a “CATcerto” for Nora’s music. It’s awesome! (no joke!)
http://www.catcerto.com/cat_video.htm
[
...wow. WOW. - Ed.]
[...and that is SO a joke. A very sophisticated and well-executed modern joke. - Ed.]
@Leslie (NTA) did you ever see “Sweatin’ to the Ancients”? That would be a vigorous aerobic workout to Gregorian chant.
[ *SNORT* - Richard Simmons in monastical robes!?
- Ed.]
Saw this as part of a Pop Art exhibit in Graz, Austria about a month ago. What surprised me was that an artist could take YouTube clips, music by someone else, and claim fame for it. My 2 cents.
“Sweating to the Ancients” “A vigorous aerobic workout to Gregorian chant.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! That’s funny.
O.M. Goodness. (Swallows Tylenol, watches video again, sans sound).
Ahh, much cuter.
However, if you make an acronym out of it you almost get; Fangroovastic!
Arnold, I think my daughter wants to play the basoon(Sp) in your orchestra. It’s the only instrument, when she brought it home from school to try, that both my husband and I said, “Take that ‘instrument of torture’ back!” and meant it!
(Nope — yet AGAIN, my awesome levels of geekiness are revealed!! I “nevah did he-yah” of “sweatin’ to the Ancients”….jes’ lucky in my efforts at phraseology, I guess!!)
@ Pyrit — similar punchline to somethin’ you said — One of my favorite ref’s is to remark that a woman who is particularly brave (w/out being a battleaxe) ….”has ovaries” ….
as the parallel comment about guys havin’ ….well, you KNOW (blush) …THOSE ….
(winky, winky !!)
Leslie (NTA) – Guys have whaaa ? Bald heads?
@Ed, srsly, don’t you think it would be preferable to what he usually wears?
[Hell, a burlap SACK would... um... yeah. - Ed.]
(well, I was TRYIN’ to be direct, w/out being CLEAR, BUT ….let’s just say that most guys have a pair of something else in the same general area of the anatomy as women’s ovaries ??Ya know, I was raised a little geeky Catholic girl & my dad would spin in his grave if I actually said THE WORDS ….) (M Python ref): “Nudge, nudge, wink, wink?
Know whut’ I mean?”…
That gave me the worst headache evah.
Aw, this makes me wish I hadn’t had to sell my piano….
Yay Schoenberg! I’m one of the strange ones who likes his music, too. 20th century music was my favorite part of theory class and of music history
This video makes me uber-happy.
I only liked the Mousetail Rhapsody on 1:13.
Ok, now it is 100 degrees in Seattle.
@OK, Boaks, sing for me the tone row from “Moses und Aron.” GO!
I don’t know from Schoenberg. If a classical piece was never used in a Looney Tunes cartoon, it is outside my knowledge. (God bless you, Carl Stalling, and may you be gathered into the heavenly places by all of the great composers you clipped from.)
Von Zep, Carl Stalling was a frickin’ genius. As a trained musician, it never ceased to amaze me what Stalling would sneak in there– some very obscure and nervy stuff.. In “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century” he used music from Act II of Parsifal.
PS Katrina, where ARE you?
@Cambridge_Rat_Mom: HUT!!
…oh.
@Cambridge Cat Mom:
Sssshh.
Loved watching the kittehs, didn’t mind the “music,” but the camera-work gave me motion sickness.
That cats are (of course) cute. I mean, has anyone seen an un-cute cat? Even the hairless ones are all wrinkly and adorable.
The music, on the other hand, is a perfect example of why not even my classical music obsessed dad like the modern stuff. Ugh!
Threadjack!
Omg, according to the blog (http://sisinmaru.blog17.fc2.com/), the first ever book about Maru will be published this Sept! In Japan! It will be called I Am Maru!
Here’s an alternate take of the first segment :
http://bobsworth.dreamhosters.com/keyboardcat/index.php?id=lF6IBWTDgnI&start=34
Theresa – the Metropolitan Opera has given 12 performances of “Moses und Aron.” I attended 8 of them. (I initially went because of the tenor but I adored the work from the get-go.)
@Linda– Whoa! I actually haven’t seen it since City Opera put it on, and caused a big to-do with nekkid people in the Golden Calf scene. But I love the “Burning Bush” music.
Theresa -
Of all places to talk about “Moses und Aron”, Cute Overload?!!!
Unfortunately, I don’t think the Met is planning to present it again for awhile, and the tenor and bass who were the leads are 70, and late 60’s respectively. How many young singers want to begin to learn those roles? Brilliantly done production which unfortunately never was filmed. The “Golden Calf” scene was actually pretty tame. No naked virgins.
@Linda, but Arnold was so cute! OK, Maybe not.
Would have been better if the videographer had actually selected the correct notes of op.11. Better still if a halfway decent version had emerged. Mitsuko Uchida’s clear, romantic performance showed up in the Related Videos at YT, and that was worth it. The comparison of cats on the keys works no better with Schoenberg than it did with Berlioz, Beethoven, or Scarlatti when their stuff was unfamiliar, but it’s a handy segue into animal cuteness. Actually, some of the harpsichord music of Scarlatti works better as kitten-on-the-keys than any of the others. And then there’s delicious stuff like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-fyWc6Mpd8
@catloveschanel – yeah, is that weird or what? And here in Wichita, Kansas, where 102 would be perfectly normal for the end of July, it didn’t even get up to 80 today! It’s been the most beautiful summer day I’ve ever experienced here!
Nora the kitty can play the piano
4′ 33″ is usually played during kittey nap time.
I CAN HAZ TWELF-TONE TAKNIQ?
[Heck you can has HALFTONE technique if you want, Mr. Happicat - Ed.]
Our chorus performed 4′ 33″ when I was in college. That was pretty much torture. I got yelled at during rehearsal for starting to giggle at about 3′ 33″. Keeping a straight face in performance, while our conductor gave carefully timed downbeats, was HARD.
But I like Schoenberg, and I love 20th century opera. Anyone get to Dr. Atomic last year?
@AmyJ, yes– loved the “Vishnu” chorus. Also saw “Peter Grimes,” awesome.
PS, my ex performed 4′33″ on the piano, but he cut it short by 1.5 seconds.
Theresa – Cut it short! I’m shocked! Did anyone in the audience complain?
Are you going to any operas this year? We are thinking of Lulu among others. I went to Dr. Atomic with friends who know Gerald Finley so we went backstage, my first time backstage at the Met – very cool!
Nora the cat really does play for herself – she’s great !
AmyJ, I don’t really go all that often– it has to be something different to make me take the trouble, unless someone gives me a ticket. I don’t usually go to the usual Verdi/Puccini/Mozart revivals. So if it was anything this year, it would probably be Lulu, and that depends a lot on the soprano.
PS:
#1) Yay!! TBP ( # 43 above) re. Maru Book/ September!! All o’ us feline librariologists need to gather the pennies, from behind our sofa cushions & save up. Meg (et al) please alert us when the book (as “they say” they say, these days) “is dropped”, ok?
#2) @ Ed’s (? Theo? not specified #20) I just dipped into the page of R. Simmons photos you linked above ….the photo w/ him sprawled out (no, not nekkid) among the salad greens (as tho’ he were in a Roman orgy) …is …rather…quirky & sensually suggestive ….odd but true.
[Remember, this is the internet. There are things you can't un-see.
- Ed.]
Thanks for providing that moment of “*wait, HUH???*” !!!
Theresa, I’ll keep an eye out for you – I’ll recognize you by your affinity for cute!
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