Frederic Mompou (1893-1987)
Piano Music Volume 4
Musica Callada
El pont
Muntanya (Dansa)
The title of Mompou's masterpiece Música callada comes from the Cántico Espiritual of the Spanish mystic,
St John of the Cross, where the expression música
callada (music without sound) is complemented by soledad sonora (solitude that clamours).
The poet explains 'that music is without sound as far as natural senses and
capacities are concerned' but 'solitude sounds out loud through spiritual
capacities'. In spite of the apparent clarity of the metaphor, its sense for
Mompou was 'difficult enough to explain in a language different from Spanish'.
Beyond general understanding of these words, they seem to have a personal
significance for the composer, only accessible through his music. Although each
of the 28 pieces has the brevity inherent in Mompou's musical language, as a
whole the work represents his most ambitious achievement. The four volumes
appeared between 1959 and 1967, the period of his definitive maturity, shortly
after he had secured his emotional and domestic stability by marrying Carmen
Bravo and while he enjoyed the company of an intimate group of friends,
Montsalvatge, Turull, and Valls, with whom he could share the worries of that
time in Barcelona. His prestige as a composer, almost as a 'living classic',
was daily confirmed. His Música Callada is
a summary of the most personal elements of his musical language, penetrating to
the heart of the 'mysteries of nature', but yet not without echoes of popular
music. The work represents his position as 'backward' in respect of the
increasingly prominent avant-garde. Mompou renounces the idea of perpetual
progress in Art, claiming that 'in this climbing of rugged peaks it is
necessary sometimes to take rest'. Yet at the same time his music here reaches
the highest level of harmonic difficulty and abstraction possible without
ceasing to be his own.
The first of the four volumes, each with a
different number of pieces, was published in 1959 and at once sets the pattern,
the character of the first piece indicated by the title Angelico, with a melody between the
popular and the religious, accompanied by chords of great simplicity, imitating
the ringing of bells. The second piece, Lent,
develops a single motif among dissonant chords, imbued with
characteristic melancholy. The clarity of the almost popular melody of the
following piece, Placide, conceals
a considerable achievement in harmony and instrumental register that suggest a
carillon, with a melody well known as a tuning signal for a leading Spanish
radio station. The fourth piece, Afflitto e
penoso ('afflicted and suffering'), returns to the world of the
second. Its harsh, tortured harmonies lead to a final resolution in E minor,
unexpected after the tonally imprecise opening. The following piece has no
tempo indication but the required mood, legato
metallico, is very important for Mompou, who had called the first
chord he devised a 'metallic chord'. The texture is dominated by the repetition
of notes as in Chopin's Preludes No.6 and
No. 15. For the sixth piece
Mompou returns to his characteristic sadness, imbued with almost aristocratic
distinction in the grief implicit in its turns of melody and accompanying
dissonances. The seventh piece, also marked Lento,
adds one passage after another, with a melody of unequivocally
popular character at its heart, until the return of the first. The penultimate
piece, Semplice, a concise
miniature, also has recourse to the mood of traditional song. The first volume
ends with a piece, Lento, that
captures again the more abstract character of some of the preceding pieces,
with a more than usually intense use of polyphony and harmonic dissonances.
The second volume, with seven pieces, appeared
in 1962. The first, Lento-cantabile, is
written in a style akin to that of the last piece of the first volume. The
second, the eleventh of the series, Allegretto,
adopts Mompou's popular manner in its succession of rapid dances and
reflective melodies. The twelfth piece, Lento,
delights in rich dissonances of the kind that characterize the more
'abstract' pieces of the collection. The next piece starts with a melody in
popular style, leading to a short central section of almost Bartókian violence.
The following piece, the fourteenth, is of great tonal complexity, centred on
the key of C minor, but almost atonal in harmony. The Lento-plaintif of the fifteenth piece
achieves a very ingenious rhythmic swing with a motif repeatedly superimposed
over the simple syncopations of the accompaniment. The piece that ends the
second volume, Calme, begins and
ends with an impressionist ostinato, with
a more clearly defined, central contrasting melody.
The third volume, with only five pieces, was
first performed in 1965. The first, Lento, the
seventeenth of the whole work, seems to suggest a funeral march. The second, in
spite of the indication Luminoso, with
reference to the opening motif leads to a more bitter mood, giving prominence
to a perhaps significant element from the third piece of the first volume. The nineteenth
piece, Tranquillo, is a sad
meditation on a single motif, maintained with a calm sameness of tone found
also in the following piece. This, the twentieth, Calme, has a central section that momentarily takes
on a harsher character, but returns at once to the desolation of the opening.
The last piece of the third volume, altogether the most sombre of the whole
work, Lento, offers a full gamut
of 'metallic' sounds, like bells of different kinds and sizes heard at
different distances.
The fourth volume was first performed in 1972
by the great Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha in the festival at Cadaqués.
The first piece, Molto lento e tranquillo, includes
various melodies in different registers combined with the sound of bells in
which Mompou took such pleasure. The following piece, Calme, avec clarté, seems to recall from
the past a popular song in a slower tempo. In the following piece, Moderato, a tortuously unwinding passage
is heard in alternation with a section full of luminous feeling. The thinning
of the textures in the first section of the next piece, with no tempo
indication, is replaced by the clarity of outline of the serious central part,
before a return to the opening mood. The prolonged and earnest discourse of the
twenty-sixth piece, Lento, is
followed by the Lento molto of
the next, in the abstract mood of various earlier pieces, although towards the
end there is a melody in a clear B flat minor, a vivid contrast with the
intense dissonances of the rest of the piece. The last piece, Lento, starts with a hymn, followed by
passages of varied character that grow harsher in expression. A return to the
serenity of the opening hymn brings an ending of the greatest simplicity to a
work that deserves to be considered Mompou's musical testament. In the words of
the composer: 'This music has no air nor light. It is a gentle throbbing of the
heart. It does not seek to reach beyond some minutes in space, but to try to
penetrate the great depths of our soul and the most secret regions of our
spirit'.
An unpublished example of Mompou's earliest
compositions offers an interesting contrast. Muntanya
(‘Mountain’) was written in 1915, when Mompou had only composed some
of the Impressions intimes and
part of the Scenes d'enfant. Previously unknown, in character it
belongs to the Cançons i danses and other similar works, and shows
how from the very first Mompou set out to find the ideal in sound that he
achieved in the works of his maturity. El
pont (‘The Bridge’) reflects, according to Mompou himself, his impressions
during his walks at Montjuïc in Barcelona In fact the piece was written in 1941
and abandoned at a time when he was worried about the validity of his musical
language. He later considered using it in a projected piano concerto. When the Spanish Ministry
of Education commissioned from various Spanish composers works for cello and
piano, to be published in 1977 in honour of Pau Casals, Mompou used part of El pont to create his only work in this
form, retaining the same title. This abandoned piano piece brings deeper
understanding of the composer's character and his anxiety over the significance
of his own voice in a period of avant-gardisme. His answer was Musica Callada.
Victor Estapé
Abridged English version by Keith Anderson
Jordi Masó
Jordi Masó was born in Granollers, near
Barcelona, in 1967. He studied at the Conservatory there with Josep M Roger, at
the Barcelona School of Music with the pianist Albert Attenelle, and at the
Royal Academy of Music of London with Christopher Elton and Nelly Akopian,
graduating in 1992 with the DipRAM, the highest distinction of the academy. He
has won first prizes in many National and International competitions in Spain
and has performed extensively in most European countries and in the United
States in piano recitals and in chamber music concerts. With a repertoire of
more than thirty concertos from Mozart to the contemporary, Jordi Masó is
regularly invited to play with the most important Spanish orchestras. His wide
repertoire, covering all periods and styles, with special emphasis on music of
the twentieth century, has brought first performances of many piano works by
the foremost Spanish composers. His many acclaimed recordings include the 1993
world première recording of the complete works for piano of Roberto Gerhard
(Marco Polo 8.223867), from 1997 to 2002 four discs with the complete piano
music by Frederic Mompou (Naxos 8.554332, 8.554448, 8554570 and 8554727), and
two recordings with music by Josep Soler and Joaquim Homs (Marco Polo 8.225083
and 8.225099). He has also recorded for other major companies. Since 1993 he
has been professor at the Granollers Conservatory, and, since 1996, a member of
the contemporary music group Barcelona 216,
which won the Barcelona City Prize for music in 2000.