Sheet Mewsic: Moritz von Schwind's Katzensymphonie (1868)

Summary

The Austrian painter created his Katzensymphonie as a gift to celebrate violinist Joseph Joachim’s recent appointment as director of Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik. Schwind and Joachim were both members of Die Schwarzen Katzen, a society — whose name derived from a legend that tells of black cats in wine cellars seeking out the most valuable barrels on which to nap — founded by the contralto Amalie Joachim with Bernhard and Luise Scholz on a sunny afternoon in 1862 while drinking an 1857 bottle of Rauenthaler. As Bernhard would later recall, it only admitted friends of friends “who, through ‘cat-like behavior’, made themselves worthy of such noble wine”. Johannes Brahms, Julius Otto Grimm, and Clara Schumann were eventually accepted into the society, whose constitution included the clause: “Uncat-like speech or actions shall be duly punished before the Chapter, and any member who opposes this shall be expelled from the order.”