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Frederic Mompou i Dencausse (Barcelona, 16 d’abril de 1893 – 30 de juny de 1987) fou un compositor català, conegut sobretot per les seves peces per a piano sol. Les seves partitures estan disponibles a la nostra biblioteca online.
Frederic Mompou i Dencausse, conocido como Federico Mompou (Barcelona, 16 de abril de 1893-30 de junio de 1987), fue un compositor catalán, famoso principalmente por sus obras para piano solo. Sus partituras estan disponibles en nuestra biblioteca online.
Frederic Mompou Dencausse 16 April 1893 – 30 June 1987) was a Catalan composer and pianist. He is remembered for his solo piano music and, to a degree, his songs. His sheet music is available in our online Library.
Mompou is best known as a miniaturist, writing short, relatively improvisatory music, often described as “delicate” or “intimate”. His principal influences were French impressionism, Erik Satie and Gabriel Fauré, 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 (his mother’s family owned the Dencausse bell foundry and his grandfather was a bell maker), and a kind of incantatory, meditative sound, the most complete expression of which can be found in his masterpiece Musica Callada (or the Voice of Silence) based on the mystical poetry of Saint John of the Cross.
He was also influenced by the sounds and smells of the maritime quarter of Barcelona, the cry of seagulls, the sound of children playing and popular Catalan culture. He often dispensed with bar lines and key signatures. His music is rooted in the chord G♭-C-E♭-A♭-D, which he named Barri de platja (the Beach Quarter).
Selected works
Piano solo
- Impresiones íntimas (Intimate impressions), 9 miniatures, written 1911–1914
- Pessebres (1914–1917) (Nativity Scenes)
- Scènes d’enfants (1915–1918) (Scenes of children; later orchestrated by Alexandre Tansman)
- Suburbis (1916–1917) (Suburbs; later orchestrated by Manuel Rosenthal)
- Cants màgics (1920) (Magic Songs)
- Fêtes lointaines (1920–1921) (Distant Celebrations)
- Charmes (1920–1921)
- Cançons i danses (1921–1979) (Songs and dances)
- Dialogues (1923)
- Préludes (1927–1960)
- Variations on a Theme of Chopin (1938–1957) (based on Chopin‘s Prelude No. 7 in A major)
- Paisatges (1942–1960) (Landscapes)
- El Pont (1947)
- Cançó de bressol (1951) (Lullaby)
- Música callada (Silent music or Voices of silence) (Primer cuaderno – 1959, Segundo cuaderno – 1962, Tercer cuaderno – 1965, Cuarto cuaderno – 1967)
Voice and piano
- L’hora grisa (1916) (The grey hour)
- Cuatro melodías (1925) (Four melodies)
- Comptines (1926–1943) (Nursery Rhymes)
- Combat del somni (1942–1948) (Dream combat)
- Cantar del alma (1951) (Soul Song)
- Canciones becquerianas (1971) (Songs after Bécquer)
Ballets
- Don Perlimpin (1956; written with Xavier Montsalvatge)
Choral
- Los Improperios (The Insults), for chorus and orchestra (1964; written in memory of Francis Poulenc)
- L’Ocell daurat (The Golden Bird), cantata for children’s choir (1970)
Guitar
- Suite Compostelana for guitar (1962; composed for Andrés Segovia)
- Cançó i dansa No. 10 (Sobre dos Cantigas del Rei Alfonso X), originally for piano (1953), transcribed for guitar by the composer (undated manuscript)
- Cançó i dansa No. 13 (Cançó: El cant dels ocells; Dansa (El bon caçador)) for guitar (1972).
Recordings
Mompou himself recorded a few of his piano pieces for EMI in 1950 and then a much larger portion of his piano output, including the Musica callada, for Ensayo in 1974, when he was over 80 years old. The later recordings have been released in a boxed set of 4 CDs by Brilliant Classics. For decades, other pianists rarely recorded his works, with major figures such as Arthur Rubinstein, Guiomar Novaes, Magda Tagliaferro, and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli recording just a handful of his pieces. In the late 1950s, Mompou’s wife, Carmen Bravo, recorded some of his works for EMI. The Spanish specialist Alicia de Larrocha recorded a larger selection, and more recently, Mompou’s works have received greater attention. Acclaimed contemporary pianists such as Stephen Hough in 1997 and Arcadi Volodos in 2013 have released full CDs devoted to his pieces, and Jordi Masó has recorded a cycle of Mompou’s piano works for Naxos Records.
Other contemporary pianists who have recorded Mompou’s pieces include Daniil Trifonov, Alexandre Tharaud, Herbert Henck, Jenny Lin, Aaron Krister Johnson,[10] and Javier Perianes, among others. British pianist Martin Jones has recorded the complete piano works of Mompou for Nimbus, including those unpublished in Mompou’s lifetime, many of which were discovered when his apartment was cleared out in 2008. The great Spanish soprano Victoria de los Ángeles recorded Mompou’s haunting song cycle El combat del somni, and a video from 1971 survives of her singing one of these songs in her living room with the composer as her accompanist. Also, Spanish guitar great Andrés Segovia recorded Mompou’s Suite Compostelana, which was dedicated to him.
Links: Frederic Mompou wikipedia
