A full 15% of all web traffic is devoted to delivering digital cats to our cat-hungry world. Videos, pictures, memes, comics, whatever: we loves us our kitties.

Well, it’s about time I jumped on the wagon here and posted about cats! I would venture to say that less than .01% of Art Music is about cats, but I do know a few pieces. Some are obnoxiously silly, some are slightly bizarre, and then there’s this really cozy one from the Hermit Songs of Samuel Barber – a little song, sung by a monk to his furry study companion, Pangur.

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!

I was introduced to the music of living American composer Daniel Dorff by my (young) children, of all people.

If you have kids, and you have a car, you’ve probably been there. A long car ride (and by “long” I mean “more than 30 seconds”), and the whining begins: bathroom, bored, s/he touched me, hungry, s/he wiped boogers on me. So as the parent, you learn important skills in distraction, and put together a literal bag of tricks in an attempt to retain not only a sliver of sanity, but also your will to live. In my trick-bag are many CD’s of music; many of them are just slightly less annoying than the sound of whining children, but hey, the lesser of two evils, right?

Then there was a Daniel Dorff CD: a handful of children’s tales set for narrator and orchestra. How wonderful to find something that the kids and parents could enjoy together?

While I don’t really know him personally, I admire Dorff because, while his music has been played by major orchestras and ensembles (thinks global), he’s a guy who clearly does not suffer from a big head (acts local.) Besides composing, is vice president of music publisher, gives lectures, plays clarinet, volunteers for professional guilds, helps to develop music software, among (I imagine) many other things. And his list of compositions shows that he is writing for people he knows, rather than untouchable superstars (though his pieces have been played by them as well.) So, it turns out that famous composers can be normal, nice, people!

Here’s a short movement of a different piece that I believe captures Dorff’s sound and writing style.

“You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn’t?”

That’s how American composer John Adams describes his piece, “Short Ride in a Fast Machine“. Of note here is the wood block part – it plays a steady beat, like a metronome, in time with the orchestra, but not always on the same strong beat as the other instruments. Every once in a while, it skips a half-beat.