Sheet Music from Cats

About the musical: Cats

CATS is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber (ALW) in 1981 based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot, adapted by Richard Stilgoe.

While CATS is often criticized for its lack of plot, it does have a minimal story used to string its musical numbers together. CATS tells of a particular English feline tribe, the Jellicles, who have come together for their annual Jellicle Ball at a junkyard to make the Jellicle Choice and announce the cat who can be reborn. Each cat "auditions" with a different song and/or dance number. Some minor complications involving the abduction of the Jellicle patriarch, Old Deuteronomy occur before a cat is chosen. It turns out to be Grizabella, "the Glamour Cat," whose now-faded charms do not prevent her from singing "Memory," the show's best-known song. It has been recorded by over 150 artists, and is considered by some to be Webber's signature tune. The lyrics are based on Eliot's poems "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and "Preludes."