How to read music

is about much more than quavers, semi-quavers, minims, bars, rests and more. It is not just "FACE" and "Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit" as we were first taught.  It is extraordinarily, and perhaps gloriously, complicated.

Yesterday someone came up with a question which startled me.

"Cat, why did you make music such an important part of the lives of the Cathedral Cats?"

Oh, did I? Yes, I suppose I did. I have them cleaning the organ pipes and putting the used notes back in the proper places on the page. I let them have their own purring carol. 

I have also mentioned how the cats, particularly Bach, like to feel the music when Tom is playing the organ. That is something more than just the vibrations; it is Tom's interpretation of the music on the page. Decani understands that the marks on the page tell Tom what to do but he also understands that this is only part of it all. 

The Cathedral Cats love music. All of them are probably frustrated musicians. It is why I gave them the fancy flashing light balls one year. They can keep in perfect time with those. I hesitate to give them drums. How often is Bach's Christmas Oratorio played in the cathedral?

Music is of course an important part of cathedral life, a very important part. It is an important part of religious life everywhere. There was a "hymn contest" here recently. I think there were something like thirty-three entries. You could write the words to a known tune or you could write words and a tune. I suspect that, being the Anglicans were running the competition, "Hymns Ancient and Modern" featured large in it. Certainly the winning one in the "known tune" category was to a tune I knew. The winner in the other category sounded very similar to many tunes they use. (In order to support the local priest, a man I rather like, I sent in a very simple set of words to a well known African folk-song. It was not mentioned. I would be curious to know what the organist thought. He probably thought it was impossible to play on the wonderful organ they have there.)

The question I was asked came up at the same time as a very interesting exchange that came up on a news feed I read. In that someone was writing about other ways to "read" music and to listen to it. They mentioned the work of Pauline Oliveros and her "Sonic Meditations". This is something I can very vaguely remember having made a bit of a splash when I was in my teens. Someone in the music department at my teacher training college was involved. It was considered very, very radical. 

It would be considered much less radical now but the idea of allowing yourself to become that deeply involved in any piece of music surely should not have been. Isn't this the way conductors work when they interpret the markings on a score? 

I am not musical in that way. I can read music but I cannot read it in the way a musician does. I am not like Middle Cat's music lecturer at her teacher training college. I saw him morning after morning on the train. He would have a musical score in front of him like a novel and it was very obvious he was completely oblivious to what was going on around him. He would be immersed in the music. I often sat opposite him. On one occasion he looked up and I, naughtily, made a few gestures as if conducting. He looked at me in a puzzled sort of way, then back down at the manuscript. Then he shook his head and gestured back. All I can think of is that, completely by accident, I had done something close to what he was thinking about. I have no idea what piece of music he was working on.

I have often thought I would like to conduct an orchestra. If you could get them to produce the piece in the way you imagined it would surely be a source not so much of satisfaction but of relief. It would be an "I thought this and it can be done" moment. It would be done not so much for myself but for the composer. Did I get it right? Probably not but it would be good to try.

Perhaps all that is why I allow the Cathedral Cats to be musical. They have Tom and the organ - an orchestra in itself - at their disposal. They tell me there are many ways to interpret music and, being cats, they can involve themselves more deeply than any human I know. I am just a little jealous of all that.