Shostakovich wrote about 50 movie scores, though most were for eminently forgettable propaganda films. For Shostakovich the Silly Little Mouse film project must have been a relief on all levels.

The Tale of the Silly Little Mouse is one of the favorite tales by the popular Russian children's writer Samuil Marshak. It is about a baby mouse who will not go to sleep, even to its mother's lullabies. The desperate mama mouse brings in several other animals to sing to the mouse and unfortunately includes a hungry cat in the list of serenaders, who is all too successful at putting the baby mouse to sleep.

The director Tsekhanovsky proposed to make an animated film out of this tale and asked Shostakovich to provide the music. The composer relished the idea of giving different animals their own characteristic variations on the mouse-mother's lullaby. In addition, he was able to write the score first, since the animation was to be drawn in time to a sound track rather than the other way around.

The result was a small opera, as Shostakovich gave voices and words to the animals who serenade the mousekin. He inserted recorded animal noises into the film track to blend with the music at key points, perhaps the only time Shostakovich used pre-recorded sounds in any of his music. He also approved of and followed an important change Tsekhanovsky made in the plot. In the original, after the cat lulls the baby mouse to sleep, she realizes she is hungry, steals the sleeping baby away, and eats him. In the film script, the cock crows, the mother mouse finds the cradle empty and raises an alarm. An old dog who has seen where the cat went attacks the cat and after a struggle chases the animal assassin away before the baby is harmed. The dog brings the mouse back, reuniting mother and her offspring, who is now happy to be sung to sleep by its mother.

The music is light and charming, with deft and heartwarming orchestral touches. Shostakovich perhaps sought to emulate the success of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf by adding narration to the score. But the most convincing version of the score was arranged, with the approval of the Shostakovich Estate, for inclusion in a Riccardo Chailly recording project for London Records.

The arranger, Andrew Cornall, eliminated the narration, transcribed the animal sound effects for live percussion, and gave instrumental parts rather than human vocalists to the individual animal singers: Mother Mouse is a flute, Pig is a bassoon, Duck is a trumpet, Horse is a trombone, Toad is a double bass solo, and Cat is a violin. Baby Mouse rejects each singer in his own voice, a high oboe. The fairy-tale voice of the celesta is prominent in the scoring.

The assessment of this work is simple: It is by far the happiest and most charming of all of Shostakovich's music.

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