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Federico Mompou

Federico Mompou was a Catalan composer known for his piano miniatures and songs. He studied piano in Barcelona and Paris, developing a small but personal body of work. His pieces were characterized by structural simplicity and economy of notation, though they were worked on for years. He was influenced by French composers like Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, as well as Catalan folk music traditions. Many works evoked moods or scenes through rich, often chromatic harmonies combined with diatonic melodies. Late in life, he produced some larger choral and stage works.

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683 views3 pages

Federico Mompou

Federico Mompou was a Catalan composer known for his piano miniatures and songs. He studied piano in Barcelona and Paris, developing a small but personal body of work. His pieces were characterized by structural simplicity and economy of notation, though they were worked on for years. He was influenced by French composers like Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, as well as Catalan folk music traditions. Many works evoked moods or scenes through rich, often chromatic harmonies combined with diatonic melodies. Late in life, he produced some larger choral and stage works.

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Sergio Miguel Miguel
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Mompou, Frederic [Federico]

(b Barcelona, 16 April 1893; d Barcelona, 30 June 1987). Catalan


composer. Essentially a piano miniaturist and songwriter, he
created a small but highly personal body of work. He began to
study the piano at the Barcelona Conservatory and gave his first
public recital at the age of 15. In 1911 he travelled to Paris where
he studied privately with Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix (piano) and
Marcel Samuel-Rousseau (harmony). He remained in Paris until
1941, when he returned to Barcelona. A shy, somewhat timid
person, he nevertheless moved in well-connected circles
throughout his life and made notable friendships, including Poulenc
and the painter Mir, with the second of whom he had something in
common as a creative artist, in terms of the surface simplicity of
their work and their reliance on distinctive symbols or gestures
drawn from their Catalan environment and folklore. For many
years, until disabled by a stroke, he lectured on his own music at
Msica en Compostela, an annual gathering of international
students at Santiago de Compostela.
Mompous op.1 is the set of nine Impresiones intimas (191114).
According to the composers own account, these miniatures
which exhibit a mixture of adult musicality and naive, childlike
emotional directness were written in response to hearing Faur.
However, if they do display influences, it is more those of Debussy,
Ravel and Mompous nationalist forebears, while his own
distinctive voice, which remained little changed over the course of
his life, is already evident. There followed a series of works bearing
descriptive titles Scnes denfants, Pessebres, Suburbis (the
titles used are in the language of the country where the work was
first published) in which the example of Satie becomes more
evident. Like Satie, Mompou turned his own technical limitations
into a personal aesthetic, which he termed primitivista. This is
immediately obvious on the page in an extreme economy of
notation. But this apparent simplicity belies the composers
struggle for perfection. Even the shortest of miniatures were
worked on or revised over a period of years. Satie is also
discernible in the use of such performance directions as Chantez
avec la fracheur de lherbe humide in Scnes denfants. But there
is no sense of Satiesque irony in Mompou, whose naive approach
remains rooted in Romanticism. He had little in common with Les
Six.
Aside from the French influence, Mompou owed much to his
Spanish and Catalan nationalist forebears. As with Falla, the
structural and modal idiosyncracies of folk music pervade his work.
Indeed the far greater virtuosity of Fallas music belies a great deal
that the two composers have in common. Modes and figurations
typical of Andalusian and other regional idioms are to be found in
Mompou, but more often his melodic writing is rhythmically and
structurally suggestive of Catalan folksong. Occasionally authentic

or quasi-authentic Catalan melodies are used, such as La filla del


Marxant in the last of the Scnes denfants. The long series of 14
Canons i danses are all, with the exception of numbers 5, 6, 10
(which uses two of the Cantgas de Santa Maria of Alfonso el
Sabio) and 13 (the only one for guitar) and the danses of 3, 9 and
14, based on traditional Catalan tunes, which are enfolded in rich,
sophisticated harmony. This combination of diatonic melody with
rich, often chromatic harmony, is the basis of all Mompous music.
Many of his miniatures set out to evoke the essence of a particular
mood, either a response to a scene in life or something more
abstract: he believed in the magical power of harmony to be quite
precise in this respect. His Cants mgcs and Charmes may be
seen as an attempt to imagine how a medieval practitioner of the
occult might have used this power. In the four volumes of Msica
callada (195967) quiet or silent music whose texts are taken
from St John of the Cross (a writer set by Mompou on a number of
occasions), he creates a mystical, spiritual series of moods. Here,
as with late Falla, there is an increased austerity compared with
earlier works, but the structural simplicity remains unchanged. A
final substantial group of pieces comprises a body of often very
beautiful songs, many of them settings of Catalan texts. Of these,
Combat del Somni may perhaps be singled out as an example of
Mompou at his most expansive and haunting, while the two sets of
Comptines, which set traditional counting-game rhymes, exemplify
his interest in the world of childhood. Late in his life, Mompou
produced some more ambitious choral and stage works, including
the oratorio Improperios, while many arrangements and
orchestrations of his music have been made by other hands.
WORKS
(selective list)

stage
Perimplinada (ballet, after F.G. Lorca), 1956, collab. Montsalvatge
piano
Impresiones intimas, 191114, rev. 1959; Pessebres, 191417; Scnes denfants,
191518; Suburbis, 191617; Cants mgcs, 191719; Ftes lointaines, 1920;
Charmes, 192021; 3 variations, 1921; Dialogues III, 1923; Canons i danses
nos.14, 19218, nos.512, 194262; Prludes nos.16, 192730; Souvenirs de
lexposition, 1937; Variaciones sobre un tema di Chopin, 193857; Dialogues IIIIV,
19414; Paisajes, 194260; Canons i danses VXII, 194262; Preludes nos.110,
194351; La canion que ms amaba, 1944; Cancin de cuna, 1951; Msica
callada, 195967 [4 vols]
Songs: Lhora grisa (M. Blancafort), 1915; Canoneta incerta (J. Carner), 1926; 4
mlodies, 1926; Le nuage (M. Poms), 1928; Comptines IIII, 1931; Combat del
Somni (J. Jans), 19428; Comptines IVVI, 1943; Llueve sobre el ro, Pastoral
(J.R. Jimnez), 1945; Cantar del alma (St John of the Cross), 1945; Can de la
fira (T. Garcs), 1945; Aureana do sil (R. Cabanillas), 1951; Sant Marti (P. Ribot),
1962; Primeros pasos (C. Jans), 1964; 5 Melodas sobre textos de Paul Valry,

196573; Becquerianas (G.A. Bcquer), 1971


Choral: Cantar del alma (St John of the Cross), chorus, org, 1951; Improperios
(liturgical texts), Bar/B, chorus, orch, 1963; LOcell Daurat, chorus, 1970; Propis del
temps davent, chorus, org, 1973; Ball rodo, SATB, 1976; La vaca cega (J.
Maragall), chorus, org, 1978
Other inst: Suite compostelana, gui, 1962; Pastoral, org, 19723; El pont, vc, pf,
1976
Principal publishers: Eschig, Salabert, Union Musical Ediciones S.L.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
KdG (J. Rosteck)
S. Kastner: Federico Mompou (Madrid, 1946)
M. Valls: La msica catalana contemporana (Barcelona, 1969
70), 113ff
C. Jans: La vida callada de Federico Mompou (Barcelona, 1975)
A. Iglesias: Federico Mompou (Madrid, 1977)
W. Mellers: Le jardin retrouv: the Music of Federico Mompou
(York, 1987)
R.P. Paine: Hispanic Traditions in Twentieth-Century Catalan
Music (New York, 1989)
RICHARD PETER PAINE

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