Frederic Mompou

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Frederic Mompou (1980)

Frederic Mompou i Dancausse , Spanish also Federico Mompou (born April 16, 1893 in Barcelona , † June 30, 1987 in Barcelona) was a Spanish composer and pianist .

Life

Federico Mompou's father, a lawyer, was Catalan and his mother French. He got his first piano lessons from one of his aunts. At the age of fifteen he gave his first public piano concerto and in 1909 decided to become a composer following a concert given by Gabriel Fauré . He first studied at the Conservatorio del Liceo in Barcelona and went to the Paris Conservatory in 1911 with the recommendations of Enrique Granados to Gabriel Fauré , where he took further piano lessons from Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix . In the same year he composed the first part of his suite for piano. He was heavily influenced by Claude Debussy and Erik Satie . Due to his extreme shyness, he gave up his intended pianist career and devoted himself only to composing. He only played the piano for his closest friends.

After the outbreak of World War I , he returned to Barcelona, ​​where he wrote his first important compositions, the Impresiones intimas , Cants Màgics and Escenas de niños . In 1920 he went back to Paris. In 1924 he opened a confectionary that quickly went bankrupt. Until 1937 he no longer composed because of a weak nervous system. In the same year his brother suffered an attack of tuberculosis and his father died. The mother remarried in 1938. Mompou stayed in Paris until 1941, when he fled the German occupation to Barcelona.

In 1941 Mompou met the pianist Carmen Bravo at a piano competition. After a long friendship, the two married in 1957. During this time Mompous began his second phase of composition. Federico Mompou belonged to the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi in Barcelona. Otherwise, however, he lived in seclusion until his death in 1987 at the age of 94. Mompou found his final resting place in the city cemetery of Barcelona, ​​the Cementiri de Montjuïc .

Federico Mompou was friends with Heitor Villa-Lobos , Francis Poulenc , Darius Milhaud , Paul Valéry and Arthur Rubinstein .

plant

Mompous piano in the Museu de la Música , Barcelona

The influence of the French Impressionists is clearly evident in Mompou's works, which were mainly created for piano solo. Erik Satie , in particular , is used as a model for the slightly dissonant sounds that Mompou recorded in his style of "notated improvisation". The chimes of his childhood bells also seem to have influenced Mompou's compositions. The notes often sound like bells for a long time. Mompou wrote almost exclusively miniatures: short, slow, unadorned pieces with few notes. Virtuoso passages are seldom heard. Mompou's compositions are - and in this he resembles the early Satie in particular - minimalist, true to his wish to “write no note too many and no note too little”. But above all, Mompou took his time. The composition of many works and cycles stretched over decades.

The composer thought little of the famous Prix ​​de Rome and complained that the jury selected a mediocre symphony but had no eye for a single side of good music.

In 2011, based on his composition Suburbis, a play was staged by the theater ensemble 360 ​​° in Berlin.

Selection of works

Sound sample


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Compositions for piano solo

  • Impresiones intimas - Planys (1911–1914)
  • Pessebres (1914-1917)
  • Scènes d'enfants (1915-1918)
  • Suburbis (1916-1917)
  • Cants magics (1917-1919)
  • Fêtes lointaines - six pieces pour piano (1920)
  • Charmes (1920–1921)
  • Trois variations (1921)
  • Cançons i danses (1921–1979)
  • Dialogues (1923)
  • Preludes (1927-1960)
  • Souvenirs de l'Exposition (1937)
  • Variations sur un thème de Chopin (1938–1957)
  • Paisajes (1942-1960)
  • Canción de cuna (1951)
  • Musica Callada (Primer cuaderno - 1959, Segundo cuaderno - 1962, Tercer cuaderno - 1965, Cuarto cuaderno - 1967)

Compositions for voice and piano

  • L'hora grisa (1916)
  • Cuatro Melodías (1925)
  • Comptines (1926-1943)
  • Combat del somni (dream fight) based on texts by the poet Josep Janés (1942–1950)
  • Cantar del alma (1951)

Other works

  • Los Improperios for baritone solo, choir and orchestra (1964)
  • Cantar del alma for choir and organ (1951)
  • Suite Compostelana for guitar (1962)
  • El pont for violoncello and piano (1976)
  • Canco I Dansa No. 13 for guitar (1986)
  • Canco I Dansa No. 10 , originally for piano, transcribed for guitar by the composer himself.

Recordings

all piano works:

  • Complete piano works (4CDs), played by the composer, Brilliant Classics 1974

Música Callada:

"Combat del somni":


"Improperios":

  • with Jerzy Artysz and the Cor de Valencia, conductor: Josep Pons , harmonia mundi 2007

literature

  • Rosenmann, Mauricio : songs without sound. Notes on Federico Mompou, Ralf R. Ollertz, Carlos Saura and Frédéric Chopin. Saarbrücken 1995
  • Bastianelli, Jérôme: Federico Mompou, 1893–1987. À la recherche d'une musique perdue. Lausanne 2003
  • Prevel, Roger: La musique et Federico Mompou (preface by Vladimir Jankélévitch). Editions Ariana, Geneva 1976
  • Jankélévitch, Vladimir: La Présence lointaine. Albeniz, Séverac, Mompou. Editions du Seuil, Paris 1983. ISBN 2-02-006451-0
  • Rosteck, Jens : Federico Mompou. In: Contemporary composers. Loose-leaf dictionary, ed. by Wolfgang Sparrer. 13. Subsequent delivery, Munich 1997
  • Rosteck, Jens: "La Musique sous-entendue". Setting to music as a veiled style balance by Federico Mompou. In: between / tones. Music and other arts. Volume 7: Semantic Islands - musical mainland. For Tibor Kneif on his 65th birthday. Von Bockel, Hamburg 1997, pp. 157-180. ISBN 978-3-928770-94-1
  • Zalkind, Ann: A Study of Catalan Composer Frederico Mompou's (1893–1987) Musica Callada. (Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music). New York 2002. ISBN 0-7734-7231-2
  • Paine, Richard: Hispanic Traditions in Twentieth-Century Catalan Music: With Particular Reference to Gerhard, Mompou, and Montsalvatge. New York 1989. ISBN 0-8240-2019-7
  • Mellers, Wilfrid : Le Jardin Retrouvé. The Music of Frederic Mompou. Fairfax Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0-907209-03-4

Individual evidence

  1. a b Lourdes Morgades (El País): Carmen Bravo, pianista (Nekrolog). May 2, 2007, Retrieved July 14, 2019 (Spanish).
  2. a b George Predota: Music of evaporation-Love of Consequence Federico Mompou and Carmen Bravo. In: Interlude. July 30, 2018, accessed July 14, 2019 .
  3. Archive link ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive )

Web links