Composer Cat
Ketzel
1990s
The cat who 'composed' a piece of music by walking across a piano — and won an honourable mention in a real composition competition for it.
- Owner
- Morris Moshe Cotel
- Years
- 1990s
- Known for
- Composer Cat
Ketzel belonged to the American composer and pianist Morris Moshe Cotel, who taught at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. One day in the 1990s the cat strolled across the keys of his piano, and rather than shooing her off, Cotel listened. He heard a small, oddly coherent run of notes descending down the keyboard, and he wrote them down exactly as she had played them, titling the result 'Piece for Piano, Four Paws'.
When the Paris New Music Review announced a competition for original compositions of under one minute, Cotel — with a wink — entered Ketzel's twenty-odd seconds of music, crediting the cat as composer. The judges, reportedly not in on the joke at first, awarded the piece a special mention. Ketzel had, on paper, become a prize-winning composer.
The piece was later performed in public, with Ketzel credited on the programme, and even earned a small royalty cheque made out in the cat's name. Her gentle, improbable story was retold decades later in a children's picture book, 'Ketzel, the Cat Who Composed', keeping alive one of the most charming accidents in modern music.