Do you know Tom, the cat, and Jerry, the mouse? I am sure you do! Yes, those animated characters whose episodes made us laugh, while we watched Tom trying hard to chase Jerry and Jerry being naughty with Tom.
In today's post I will try to provide you with some tools to listen to classical music, just watching Tom&Jerry's cartoons. This is a new set of posts, where I will write about this topic: classical music and classical cartoons together.
I know kids love watching cartoons, so why don't you take advantage of that and once in a while put him/her/them an episode of any of the ones that I will suggest? They are all around 6-7 minutes long, if your child is still young and will not pay attention for more than 2-3 minutes or a whole episode, just try maybe the scenes with the music.
I have always believed that the OST (Original Soundtrack) of the films in the past were great. For cartoons, they did a lot of "Mickey Mousing" (music will enhance definitively what you are seeing, the actions, the face expressions, the feelings of the characters...). The composer will compose music ad hoc for the episode or for a whole set (for the opening credits, for the endings...) AND will use or re-arrange some other compositions that were known from other musicians.
Several episodes of Tom&Jerry have "classical" music and we can exploit it. Next, I am going to mark some of them.
- E26 (1946), titled "Solid Serenade". Tom plays the double-bass and sings a song. Here the link to the YouTube video (it shows the first part of three). By watching this episode, you might want to talk about the string family (double-bass is probably the less known one). The song in this episode does not qualify for the "classical" label, but I thought it was worth it because of the double-bass.
- E29 (1947), titled "The Cat Concerto", has won several awads. In this episode, Tom performs the famous Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2. Here is the link and here you can listen to a performance of the piano piece by the composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). You can listen to both and decide which one you like it more!
In "The Cat Concerto" you will also hear part of a Prelude (op. 28/24, in d minor) written by Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849). This episode can be useful to talk about virtuosity in music playing.
As a curiosity, in the same year, Warner Bros released a very similar Bugs Bunny episode where Bugs also performs the same piano piece. I will write about this controversy in a future post, but if you want to, you can watch both episodes and decide for yourself! This is the final minutes of "Rhapsody Rabbit").
- E52 (1950), titled "Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl". First of all, l would like to say that Hollywood Bowl is a famous amphitheatre, its sitting capacity is over 17.000, and it was built in the 20's. Second, this episode OST requires a whole symphonic orchestra (it was not usual to use such big ensembles). We can listen to Die Fledermaus of Johann Strauss (1825-1899) and the Symphonic Poem no. 3 of Franz Liszt (1811-1886). It is perfect to get the children acquainted with the orchestral instruments, what more could you ask for? Here is a 3 minutes long video. I hope you will enjoy watching it!
- E75 (1953), titled "Johann Mouse". Once more, with music of Johann Strauss (1825-1899). Besides Blue Danube, it also features the Kaiser-Walzer (in the throne scene) and the Tritsch Tratsch Polka (at the beginning of Tom and Jerry's performance for the Emperor). By watching this episode, we can learn a bit more about dance-inspired pieces (like the vals and the polka) and also about the whole Strauss family. If it is end of the year, you can talk about the New Year's Concert in Vienna (Austria) and tell the children about the famous "Radetzky" March, where the audience can join the musicians clapping their hands while the conductor and the whole orchestra play the music. Here is the link to the whole episode.
- E127 (1962), titled "Carmen get it!". Geoges Bizet (1838-1875) is the composer of the opera "Carmen", which was first performed in Paris (France) in 1875. Different tunes belonging to this opera are heard in this funny episode of Tom&Jerry. It was the last short film produced by William L. Snyder (1918-1998) and conducted by Eugene M. "Gene" Deitch (1924-2020). In this link you can take a look to the cartoon.
- E129 (1964), titled "The cat above and the mouse below". It seems to be the only one of this kind (musical cartoon) among all the Tom&Jerry's episodes that Chuck Jones conducted (1912-2002). This time, Tom is a singer. He will sing "Largo al Factotum" of "The Barber of Seville". His name is shown at the entrance of the theatre, "Signor Thomasino Catti-Cazzaza Baritone". This aria is one of the most famous of the opera (the other one is named "Una voce poco fa"). Here you can watch the whole episode.
A last suggestion that I would make is, that you can let the kids listen to these pieces while they are doing other activities (painting, playing, reading a book, writing or drawing...). The more they listen to them, the more they will like them (not only the music itself, but also if it happens that you decide to watch one of those episodes with them, they will recognize the tunes and that will help them feel the "classical" music like a friendly music to listen, not just something "boring" - this happens normally a bit later, when they are older, but if you want to prevent that, better start early!).
A brief final note: have you noticed about all the wordplays you can find? Some are very subtle. I really love them, I think they are very clever!
I hope you enjoyed reading this post!
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