When a musical genre rises or falls, the reasons aren’t always obvious, as witness one of the mainstays of the Romantic era, the character piece for piano. A spinet in the parlor was a Victorian symbol of respectability, but far beyond this, the amateur pianists who populated those parlors drew upon character pieces by Mendelssohn and Grieg whose homespun titles—Songs without Words, Lyric Pieces—mined a vein of sentimentality as much as sentiment. This was comforting music in which nostalgia was bult in from the outset and the difficulties of the industrialized world and teeming, chaotic cities could be forgotten.

You’d think that the character pieces that filled the piano benches of past generations would be even more comforting in the craziness of the modern world, but in fact, these 12 examples from the Chicago-born composer John Carbon are rare for our time. They offer the same virtues and comforts as Mendelssohn and Grieg did (not to mention countless other composers for the home market) in an unabashedly traditional harmonic scheme led by melody and infectious rhythm. 

A genre loses its liveliness without something extra to surprise and delight. In 2020 Carbon’s suit, Astro Dogs, presented the concept of aligning the 12 signs of the zodiac with a dozen dog breeds, and now in the spirit of fair play, he gives the nod to 12 felines, wild and domesticated, in this album, Astro Cats. Tin Pan Alley would say that Carbon found a hook. What actually matters, musically speaking, is the ingenuity, sprightliness, and wit that he brings to his update of the character piece. As entertaining as the suite is, I’ll confess that I don’t know why the first cat, Saharan Cheetah, is assigned to Sagittarius or why the piece sounds Spanish, to my ears, at least.

Carbon’s criteria include esoteric as well as conventional astrology, the influence of cat-loving family members, and his feeling for the nature of each species and breed. This amalgam is too hazy to pinpoint, and Carbon, in his very readable composer’s note, comments vis à vis the Saharan Cheetah, “I was only very subtly inspired by thoughts of the habitat and how the cat interacts with that environment.” I think he was right not to take a Carnival of the Animals approach, so that Carbon’s South African Lion (matched, no surprise, to the zodiac sign of Leo), enters with a sinuous saunter down the boulevard; even the loud chords that might stand for its roar are civilized.

As an overall conception, it is enough to know that Astro Cats is inspired by “the kinetic behavior of cats, with their pouncing, crouching, sprinting, as well as elements of the hunt and their mysterious, crafty nature.” Astro Dogs included one imaginary creature, the werewolf, whose equivalent here is the Cheshire Cat (Libra). It gets one of the more allusive pieces, reminiscent of a Satie Gymnopédie. On the kinetic side, the Peruvian Pampas Cat (Aries) is a pouncer, following a zigzag beat that reminded me of the opening of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7. There’s also a touch of Prokofiev in the Siberian Lynx (Capricorn), depicted as a hunter on the prowl.

Overall, I’d say that these are cool cats, most of them stretching out to relax, and I envision them, even the American Panther (Cancer), comfortably gazing at us from a salon with early Debussy in the background. To add a hint of controversy, Carbon includes the Spotted Hyena (Gemini), which despite its dog-like appearance turns out to be taxonomically closer to cats than to dogs and bears. Who knew? The hyena has a nasty, furtive reputation, but Carbon’s specimen is so gracefully acrobatic that it might be roaming dance studios.

Besides being charming and accessible, I think Astro Cats offers pieces within the reach of a good home pianist. Here everything is expertly performed by the composer’s longtime close collaborator Steven Graff, who captures the essence of each cat – feral, aloof, or purring – very stylishly. Carbon’s ring around the zodiac evokes the nostalgia imparted by the character pieces of a simpler age.