THE CAT CONCERTO

Pen drawing of Tom playing piano
REMEMBER TO CLICK IMAGES

This cartoon was constructed in 1947 with Fred Quimby as director and William Hanna and Joseph Barbera the producers. The music used was taken from Liszt and arranged by Scott Bradley. This cartoon was so popular it attracted an Academy Award which it achieved. To see an excerpt from it see below. The immense co-ordination between the moving image and the actual music is tremendous and is one of the attributes which has made this cartoon so sucessful and loved by both adults and children for generations. The Warner brothers also made a Bugs Bunny cartoon using this music but it is very static and inferior by far to this Tom and Jerry version. It is rarely seen on television.
In this cartoon, Tom is giving a Piano recital which is supposed to be a concerto by Liszt. (It is actually a Hungarian Rhapsody which was written for solo piano, but I'll come to that on page 2). It begins with all the formalities one would expect when attending such an event. Tom calmly strolls on stage of the concert hall as the orchestra are warming up. When he is ready, he passes a cool, steady glance at the conductor who promptly brings his orchestra under control by tapping on his lecturn. In his own time, Tom begins. During the performance, however, Jerry, who has been sleeping inside the piano, is woken up and seems delighted to be entertained by such beautiful music. He sits on the piano in front of Tom and joyfully listens and watches. Tom is not so happy about this and flicks Jerry off and this is when the mini war begins. Jerry sleeping
CLICK IMAGE TO HEAR!!		 At the beginning of this excerpt you can hear Tom flick Jerry off the piano and this is were the antics begin.
Jerry on piano hammer In this excerpt, you can hear how Tom's fingers are fleeting over the keys around the trap and then you can hear the sickening snap and the whoop of his finger inflating. Just after the snap you can hear a merry little melody which is being played by Jerry who is skipping merrily up and down the keyboard.
The music and action are surprisingly well matched. I feel this form of cartoon is an excellent educational tool in introducing Classical music to children aswell as to adults. As children are brought up with the belief that cartoons are the bees-knees, they will invariably watch them when they come on the television. A cunning trick!!

In the video clip, Tom only plays the sequence twice, but in the actual cartoon, he plays it three times. (Sorry! Ed.).

 Clip of The Cat Concerto
VIDEO CLIP

The emotion of the music in this cartoon is deeply dramatic and develops throughout into a heavily virtuosic piece increasingly towards the end. This can be heard in the video clip, the technical difficulties of playing chords of an octave stretch with both hands at a speedy tempo. This is an extremely difficult and strenuous motion to maintain and in the war between Jerry and Tom, Jerry forces Tom to play it three times in succession, and the animators have recognised the exhausting task that it is and demonstrate this perhaps slightly exageratedly with Tom's suit tearing to shreads.

The first half of this excerpt
builds up to Jerry slamming
the lid closed on Tom's
fingers, squashing them as
in the image.		 Tom's squashed fingers
Jerry trying to cut Tom's finger off with scissors.		 In the second half you can hear Jerry trying to snip Tom's fingers off, as in the image but he does not suceed.
Despite the poor quality of the recording from this 51 year old cartoon, you can still hear the delicate expression that the pianist put into it. We can hear how he commands his timing to present a very romantic and expressive passage. Then when Tom's fingers are flattened for the passage which has all the Hungarian feel , the pianist adjusts his timing to sound almost mechanical, as in the video the flattened fingers move with a mechanical rhythm.
Jerry is constantly interrupting Tom with some distraction or other in a bid to get his own back, make sure to click on the images to hear the piano passage. Jerry playing piano with feet. In this excerpt you can hear Jerry's interruption when he leads Tom off into a dance tune by jumping on the keys from the inside as seen in the picture.

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