As many pixels as there are on the internet dedicated to cats – and cat-a-day calendars before that – I’ve always been surprised at the lack of songs about them. I am intimately familiar with the kind of companionship that this monk feels with his white cat, Pangur (though I’ve only had black cats myself!).
In “A Monk and His Cat,” I think Barber is clearly depicting the cat walking on the piano keyboard throughout the piece. Cats can make excellent productivity coaches, in that way that they’ll get on the book you’re reading or sit on your laptop, encouraging you to stop working so hard and relax a bit. (And they should know, since they sleep eighteen hours a day.)
My favorite part of the song, musically and poetically, comes in the middle, just before the words “pleased with his own art / neither hinders the other.” The shift in harmony and in character is so beautifully caressed that I almost feel the soft fur, the responsive warmth, the purr.
Now some news! I wrote up one of my many stories about Leonore, the first feline companion I had in my young adult years. I’m happy to say that it has been published and is now available in the new anthology Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Magic of Cats, released on July 7, 2020.
Whose soul can’t use a little chicken soup right now, anyway? My story, “Cat with a Conscience,” is about a time that Leonore apologized to me for breaking a flower pot. It’s included with 100 other true stories about cats, and the royalties from the book benefit American Humane. These are the folks who brought you “No Animals Were Harmed” in the end credits of movies and a host of other animal welfare initiatives. Get a copy for the cat lover in your life today!
Speaking as we were of contentment, from all indications, the monk in “Church Bell at Night” has followed the vocation that is most fitting for his personality.
And speaking of the two very short songs in this cycle, I have a story about “Promiscuity.” When I worked at the now-defunct music library at The Catholic University of America, a graduate student in voice came in and asked me if I could help them find an art song that they could memorize tonight for a jury by tomorrow. The student was a seriously good opera singer and would probably never sing an art song again after clearing this last required hurdle.
I led the student to the Barber songs and opened to “Promiscuity.” They beamed with delight, and I think I got a hug. The student met the requirement and graduated, and now has an internationally successful career in opera. And the song is not only short, but it allows for some acting skills: Barber’s chords, sparse as they are, paint a perfect “raised eyebrow.”
