Federico Mompou

Federico (Frederic) Mompou (April 16, 1893–June 30, 1987) was a Spanish Catalan composer. He is best known for his solo piano music and his songs.

Life

Mompou was born in Barcelona (Catalonia), and studied piano there at the Conservatori del Liceu before going to Paris to study with Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix in 1911. Being rather shy personally, he abandoned a solo career and chose to pursue composition instead. In 1914 he returned to Barcelona, fleeing the war.

His Scènes d'enfants (1915-18) inspired the French critic Emile Vuillermoz to proclaim Mompou the successor to Claude Debussy.

He returned to Paris in 1921, and remained there until 1941 when he once again departed for his native Catalonia, fleeing the German occupation of Paris. An initial supporter of Franco's regime, in Barcelona he became a member of the Royal Academy of San Jorge, but otherwise lived quietly there until his death at the age of 94.

Style

Mompou is best known as a miniaturist, writing short, relatively improvisatory music often described as "delicate" or "intimate." His principal influences were French impressionism and Erik Satie, resulting in a style in which musical development is minimized, and expression is concentrated into very small forms. He was fond of ostinato figures, bell imitations and a kind of incantatory, meditative sound which Lionel Salter described as "the voice of silence ... of St. John of the Cross." ^[1]

Selected works

Works for piano solo

• Impresiones intimas (1911-1914) (Intimate impressions)
• Scènes d’enfants (1915-1918; later orchestrated by Alexandre Tansman)
• Suburbis (1916-1917) (Suburbs; later orchestrated by Manuel Rosenthal)
• Charmes (1920-1921)
• Cançons i danses (1921-1979) (Songs and dances)
• Dialogues (1923)
• Préludes (1927-1960)
• Variations sur un thème de Chopin (1938-1957)
• Paisajes (1942-1960) (Landscapes)
• Canción de cuna (1951) (Lullaby)
• Musica callada (Primer cuaderno - 1959, Segundo cuaderno - 1962, Tercer cuaderno - 1965, Cuarto cuaderno - 1967) (Silent music)

Works for voice and piano

• L'hora grisa (1916) (The grey hour)
• Cuatro melodías (1925) (Four melodies)
• Comptines (1926-1943) (Nursery Rhymes)
• Combat del somni (1942-1950) (Dream combat)
• Cantar del alma (1951) (Soul song)
• Canciones becquerianas (1971) (Songs after Bécquer)

Other works

• Suite Compostelana for guitar (1962)
• Los Improperios for chorus and orchestra (1964; written in memory of Francis Poulenc)
• Cançó i dansa No. 13 for guitar (1986)
• Cançó i dansa No. 10 originally for piano, transcribed for guitar by the composer.

References and further reading

• ^  Lionel Salter. "Federico Mompou", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1980), xii, 476.

External links

• Piano Society: Federico Mompou