Music and Cats / Book of Abstracts - Catalog - Page 13
Abstracts
Panel 1: Feline Symbolism
11:35 – 11:50
The Cat as
Artistic Cipher
AI
Exploring Feline Symbolism Across Twentieth
Century Modernism and Artistic Musical Identity
Clare Wilson / Dublin City University
Bridging musicians’ personal relationships with
cats, feline representations in musical works, and
the symbolic capacities of the feline figure, this
paper illuminates the cat as a critical symbol of
twentieth-century artistic identity. Through two
case studies—French modernist composition and
improvisational jazz traditions—it examines how
feline imagery functions as a cipher for an
aesthetic paradigm valuing autonomy, precision,
and creative singularity. Selected for their contrast
in musical form (composed modernism versus
improvised jazz) yet their shared investment in
technical
mastery
and
construction
of
self-identities, these case studies offer an
illumination on historical and cultural persistence
of feline symbolism in musical practices of the
early twentieth century.
The first case study examines Maurice Ravel’s
relationship with his Siamese cat as a lens into
French modernist aesthetics. In L’enfant et les
sortilèges, the cat duet—characterised by stealthy
chromatic runs and angular melodic contour—
sonically materialises feline litheness and
emotional
opacity.
Analytical
readings
demonstrate
how
Ravel’s
compositional
techniques project an ethos of technical mastery
and affective restraint, situating the feline as a
totem of modernist ideals.
The second case study interrogates the
emergence of “cat” as a jazz colloquialism
denoting artistic excellence, improvisational
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prowess, and social belonging.
analytical
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readings and perspectives on Thelonious
Monk’s Epistrophy and Charles Mingus’s
Mingus Ah Um, and building on Amor Kohl’s
work on jazz linguistics, it demonstrates how
the figure of the “cat” encapsulates the
musician's
elusive
virtuosity
and
countercultural autonomy. It explores how
feline attributes of cunning, unpredictability,
and resistance became central to performative
identity in jazz.
Ultimately, this paper situates the cat as a
transhistorical and cultural cipher through
which concepts within musical technique and
identity across French modernism and
improvisational
jazz
converged
in
constructing a paradigmatic artistic identity—
one grounded in self-fashioning, technical
singularity, and resistance to normative
aesthetic and social forms.
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