The Cat's Fugue
1838.
Within the dwelling of Abbé Santini, a collector in Rome, a rare copy of the 100-year-old Cat’s Fugue laid waiting to be incinerated by fate. However, something happened the score did not expect. Two lovebirds swept through the city on an infamous rendezvous and caught the cat on her arduous journey to oblivion. Fortune placed her in the hands of the Piano-God himself; Franz Liszt was soon to revive her glow.
Just two months later, Liszt traveled to Vienna and brought his newfound cat along for a ride…and left his beloved Maria D’Agoult behind. In a typical venture of the day, he arranged dates, advertised, and sold tickets for concerts in the Saale der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Very atypically, however, he chose to enlist the services of only one assisting musician; he chose to set the piano at a right angle to the audience; he chose primarily to perform works by composers other than himself; and he performed from memory. On top of it all, one of his concerts featured the inclusion of a hundred-year-old antique: The Cat’s Fugue. To restate: such behavior was viewed as strange and questionable way to generage ticket sales. Liszt’s fame, fortunately, overrode such considerations.
Lisz't Recital Program - Vienna, 1838
Beethoven: Sonata in c sharp minor
Schubert:
Das Fischermädchen
Der Kreuzzug
Die Forelle
(sung by Herrn B. Radhartinger)Rössler: Rondo (Andante in A flat)
Handel: Fugue in e minor
Rössler: Octave Etude
Scarlatti: The Cat’s Fugue
Radhartinger: Two songs
(sung by Hernn B. Radhartinger)
Hexameron - Bravura Variations on Bellini’s “Puritani March”
(Composed by Chopin, Czerny, Herz, Liszt, Pixis, and Thalberg)
Suddenly, our feline friend was at the top of the charts. (Or more realistically, she was on the charts.) Promoted by trendsetter extraordinaire, she became all the rage of the charmed and surprised Viennese public. Other pianists began searching for their own “old masters.” Carl Czerny edited an edition of 200 Scarlatti sonatas after hearing Liszt perform The Cat’s Fugue and acknowledged in the preface, “It was Liszt who gave the first impulse to this undertaking.” Wealthy girls all over Europe were recreating the cat’s original mosey up the keyboard in the sophistication of Scarlatti’s fugue.
As Czerny financially basked in the “Cat’s” success, Liszt continued to set trends. In 1839, he made history by performing the first concert consisting entirely of a single pianist and his piano: “Le concert, c’est moi,” he exclaimed. In 1840, he referred to his “reciting” of each piece at the keyboard, and thus this solo adventure was dubbed “Recitals on the pianoforte.” Before long, the English had cut it down to the singular and “recital” became its lasting name.
By doing so, Liszt revolutionized the musical world. The solo piano recital became a reoccurring phenomenon – a dramatic testimony of the individual and an epitome of romanticism. Pianists appropriated the idea and “recited” across Europe and America. Concert halls and pianos were built for these recitals and audiences flocked to see the pianists who performed them. Frequently, upon these concerts were retellings of our feline tale. By 1900, The Cat’s Fugue was acknowledged as Scarlatti’s “best known and perhaps most splendid composition." And while the fugue enjoyed its enduring blaze, it was the piano, and more significantly the great music of the past, that had truly become popular. Nearly every home had a piano upon which nearly every girl could learn to play, and upon which nearly every cat could stroll.
