Cat joint

The Sonata in G minor ( K 30 , L 499) by Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), known as the "Katzenfuge", is a one-movement sonata for harpsichord in 6/8 time with the tempo indication Moderato . Because of its musical motif , it is known as the cat fugue . The fugue is the last piece in the collection of the 30 Essercizi per Gravicembalo (= exercises for harpsichord , 1738, K 1 - K 30 ), which is dedicated to John V of Portugal .

The nickname was given to it at the beginning of the 19th century and was never used by the composer himself. Its origins lie in a legend about how Scarlatti created the unusual musical motif on which the fugue is based and can be heard in the opening bars of the piece:

After this imaginative story, Scarlatti had a cat named Pulcinella, who heard the musical motif playing over the keyboard. This was immediately written down by the composer, who then developed the entire piece from the motif. The moniker was used in concert programs in the 19th century and was used by editors such as Muzio Clementi , Carl Czerny, and Alessandro Longo, and pianists such as Franz Liszt .

The Sonata K 30 was published in London in 1738. The theorist and composer Anton Reicha was familiar with this work at the beginning of the 19th century and wrote a fugue on this topic for his 36 fugues for piano from 1803.

Carl Reichert : Katzenfuge (1870)

Anton Reicha , Fugue No. 9 (beginning)

Scarlatti's sonata developed into a popular concert piece, which was also interpreted by Franz Liszt and Ignaz Moscheles under the title Katzenfuge .

See also

• List of Scarlatti sonatas

literature

• Ralph Kirkpatrick: Domenico Scarlatti. Revised edition, Princeton University Press, 1983, ISBN 978-0-69102708-1 . ( Online partial view )
• Bruno Aulich: Moonlight Sonata and Katzenfuge and other strange titles and stories about famous musical works from three centuries. Heimeran Verlag, 1966.
• Claudia Rusch: Cats: The Book. 2016.

Issues (selection):

• London 1738 ( digitized version )
• Kenneth Gilbert ( Le Pupitre )

Further:

• Cat joint. Schott, Mainz ( digitized version )
• Cat joint. German music collection 262. Globus-Verlag, Berlin
• Cat joint. Collection de morceaux classiques et modern pour le piano . No. 10. Trautwein, Berlin.
• Cat joint. Edited by F. Liszt. Anthologie Classique , 1st Schlesinger, Berlin-Lichterfelde.

• Fugue. Set by John Sankey (with Lilypond , online )

Web links

Commons : Katzenfuge  - Collection of Images

• Katzenfuge : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
• Sound sample, harpsichord (with notes)

References and footnotes

1. ↑ Count according to Ralph Kirkpatrick .
2. ↑ Counting after Alessandro Longo .
3. ↑ “Hardly any other musician of the era has had such a fine feeling for the change in style as Reicha, who strived with the greatest energy to recapture the fugue for his time, to which he wanted to incorporate 'all the fine twists and connections of our new harmony'. This impregnation of the old fugue form with a new harmonic spirit led, especially in Reicha's 1803 published 36 fugues après un nouveau système, to bizarre results and ultimately to the dissolution of the most closed of all musical forms. ”( Ernst Bücken : Die Musik des 19. Jahrhundert. Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft , p 34. ) - sound sample