DESCRIPTION:
In March 1920, he completed "Humoristic Scherzo" (better known by its subtitle, "The Cat and the Mouse"), a solo piano piece based on another poem, this time, however, old and humorous: Jean de la Fontaine's "Le Vieux Chat et la Jeune Souris" ("The Old Cat and the Young Mouse"). Upon hearing him play this work in a recital in Fontainebleau on September 21, 1921, the publisher Jacques Durand bought it outright for five hundred francs. Published as "Scherzo Humoristique" (subtitled "Le Chat et le Souris"), this debut publication became Copland's first recognized work, one still widely known and played.

The La Fontaine fable tells of a young mouse captured by an old cat; the mouse appeals to the cat with various arguments, but the cat, unmoved, eats him just the same. The fable concludes, "Youth deludes itself into believing that it can obtain everything; old age is merciless." The opposition of youth and old age, hope and disillusionment, apparently spoke forcibly to the young Copland.

"The Cat and the Mouse" is as adventurous and personal as any of Copland's apprenticeship works; some of its harmonies, in fact, derive from or at least duplicate a fragment for piano entitled "The Sea Fairies" ("Tone Poem for Piano after Tennyson's Poem of the Same Name"). But the portrayal of a cat stalking a mouse -- unpredictably coy and sinister -- inspires a more objective and ironic tone. The nervous scampering up and down the piano suggests, further, some connection with machine music of a decidedly ominous variety, as if the threat of age and death were related to that of industrial life. This includes the climax -- crashing, dissonant chords followed by a soft passage marked "funereal" that anticipates the many far more solemn dirges of Copland's later music. The work ends in a whimsical but deadly whimper, like the end of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" or Stravinsky's "Petrushka," a figure also caught in a game of cat and mouse.

In addition, the music contains certain elements related to Copland's explicitly jazzy works to come; the final gesture, for instance, anticipates the end of a piano piece composed the following year, entitled "Jazzy." In this respect, the piece warrants comparison with Zez Confrey's "Kitten on the Keys" and John Alden Carpenter's "Krazy Kat" (both 1921), though in notable contrast, Copland's effort contains a distinctively black humor verging on the grotesque. Such darkness distinguishes it as well from Villa-Lobos' astoundingly similar "Cat and Mouse" ("O Gato e o Rato") for piano (1917) -- a work Copland surely knew nothing about at the time.

(Aaron Copland: The Life & Work of an Uncommon Man)

Please take note that the audio AND the sheet music ARE NOT mine. Change the quality to a minimum of 480p if the video is blurry.

Original audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcsMhuREKbw
(Performance by: Aaron Copland)
Original sheet music: I forgot the exact link, sorry.

NB. There is a typographical error at the title screen. It should be "Aaron", and not "Aarom."