Frederic Mompou (1893 - 1987)
Piano Music Volume 1
Although Adolfo Salazar praised the "agreeable colouring"
resulting from the "experiments on the keyboard" of Frederic
Mompou, the great Madrid critic saw something suspicious in this Catalan
composer he had turned his back on everything which appeared to be truly
essential to the mainstream of great European music, and what defines great
creators and able craftsmen alike, Neither counterpoint, fugue, orchestration,
or thematic and formal development appear to have ever held the least interest
for the composer of Cancons i Danses. But is this a criterion for
judging the work of a composer who adopts an aesthetic position based precisely
on the apparent renunciation of those values? Mompou did not want to compose
like Cesar Franck, - even less like Schoenberg, and if his lack of ambition was
no obstacle to his becoming a composer of some merit, it is because of the
perfect marriage between his means and his ends. Salazar's criticism reminds us
of the judgement of Rene Leibowitz concerning Chopin: the Polish composer would
always be in reality just an amateur composer (albeit an amateur of genius). In
both cases, it is understandable that thinkers of such rigidly held (though
sometimes misguided) views should harbour such suspicions. In both instances,
although on a different scale, it is how the music affects us, and not some
opposing theory, which silences any verdict reached.
The career of Frederic Mompou, born in Barcelona in 1893, was typical of composers
of his generation, but he clearly stands out from the others for his
originality. His mother's family, of French origin and owners of the Dencausse
bell foundry, was to have a decisive importance in the sentimental education
of the composer. His attraction for French culture, a preference more Manichean
than passionate; he once proclaimed French music as true and German
music as false, is shared by nearly all his Catalan contemporaries, except
Roberto Gerhard, but his direct knowledge of the fascinating sound world of
bells was a much more personal characteristic which was to give him the unmistakable
colouring of his most beautiful chords. Hearing Faure performing his own music
in Barcelona was one of the great
influences on his life, and the advanced level he was reaching as a pianist
made his dream to go to Paris to study in the Conservatoire, directed at that time by Faure
himself, perfectly feasible, but his almost pathological shyness prevented him
from even applying for admission. Instead, he took private lessons from the
great pianist Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix. Mompou therefore never followed any conventional
studies of counterpoint, fugue and composition. The peculiarities of his
character were also soon to bar the way to the possibility of a career as a
concert pianist. For ever shut in in his own aesthetic world, but also arousing
growing admiration in Motte-Lacroix and other French musicians, Mompou composed
and began to find success by performing his works in the most exclusive
Parisian salons. His success was confirmed by the appearance in 1921 of a
famous article by the influential critic Emile Vuillermoz, defender in France of the causes not only
of Debussy and Ravel, but also of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. The authority of
Vuillermoz makes his final judgement all the more impressive. "The only
disciple and successor to the composer of La Mer (… ) is surely the young Spaniard
Frederic Mompou, who, without ever having known Debussy, has understood and
absorbed the essence of his teaching."
Vuillermoz's text, a remarkable mixture of analytic precision and
literary quality quite uncommon in writing of this kind, represents a
practically definitive description of Mompou's style and artistic personality. His
return to Barcelona, where he was to remain for the rest of his life in some
isolation and with periods of total silence, was not to bring any significant
changes in his musical language, He was to become a rather patriarchal figure,
somewhat remote, even alien, to the young Catalan composers who tried to
assimilate, perhaps with more failure than success, the styles of the European
vanguard. Mompou had a characteristic beyond their reach: that of being a
composer performed and listened to spontaneously by the highly conservative
public of his country. His works even featured in the syllabuses of the
Barcelona Conservatory (and still do), and are played by an endless number of
students. Whether the criticism of his lack of interest in the new musical
styles is legitimate or not, nobody can deny Mompou's qualities which define him
as a genuine artist in the highest sense of this word: the possession of a
personal poetry, his own unmistakeable sound, discovered through direct contact
with the sound of the piano, and the way in which he found in this an
expression of his inner world, formed from a mixture of such disparate elements
as great Catalan mystical poetry and love of the atmosphere of the maritime
quarters which he knew in the Barcelona of his childhood, in which the advance
of civilization is imposed on the continuance of a pre-capitalist life, and where
the relationship of the individual with traditional music could still be
immediate. In fact he gave the name Barri de platja (beach quarter) to
the chord G flat, C, E flat, A flat, D, which, for him, was the essence of
all his music. In its sonority it surely tries to reproduce the sound of
the familiar bells and the distant cries of the seagulls, mixing with those of
the children playing near the onlooker, who, although alone, lovingly contemplates
the colourful scene of the people by the sea and finds in it something of deep
significance.
It is this love for popular Catalan culture that makes Mompou's Cancons
i Danses (Songs and Dances) one of his most important works. At least they
are, of all his creations, the best-known in his own country, and the fact that
their composition spreads over nearly the whole of his life, from 1918 to 1962,
makes them all the more interesting. The pairing of a slow song followed by a
more animated dance reminds one of the combination of prelude and fugue, or
dances such as the Hungarian Csardas. The thirteen pieces written for piano,
almost the only instrument Mompou composed for (Canco i Dansa No. 13
also exists for guitar, and No.15 for organ) on the whole represent adaptations
of popular Catalan songs. If setting traditional tunes to harmony is very
common amongst composers of his time, Mompou shines in this art: his ability to
give a song a harmony which appears simple and natural, but at the same time
original and highly sophisticated, is one of his greatest secrets. The chords
may be common, but often sweet and sonorous dissonances colour them, frequently
in the form of an added upper melody with an unpredictable line which appears
to emerge from the very excitation of the resonance of the natural harmonics, a
technique which constitutes the true counterpoint of Mompou. Amongst the songs
used are La Filla del Carmesi, and Dansa de Castelltercol (Canco i Dansa No.
I), Senyora Isabel i Galop de Cortesia (No.2), El Noi de la Mare (Canco
No.3), El Mariner i Ball del Ciri (Canco i Dansa No.4), Muntanyes
Regalades and L 'Hereu Riera (No, 7), El Testament d'Amelia and La
Filadora (No.8), El Rossinuyol (Canco No.9), Ball de l'Aliga i
Turcs I cavallets, both of which come from the dances of the fiestas of the
Patum de Berga (Canco i Dansa No. 11), La Dama d'Arag6 and La Mala Nova
(No. 12) and Canco del Lladre (Canco No. 14). But not all these pieces
are based on the rich universe of Catalan song. The Canco i Dansa No.
10, showing other less well-known concerns of Mompou, uses two Cantigas
of Alfonso x. The rest are of original inspiration. If the sounds of his
homeland are omnipresent (Dansa No.5 could easily be taken for another
popular song, while Dansa No.3 is a sardana, the most
characteristic dance of Catalonia, known to be salvaged from an unfinished string
quartet, and Dansa No.9 almost quotes popular themes as in Dansa No.
14), in other cases the stylistic references are broader: Canco No.5,
conceived during a dream, sounds like an ancient chant, full of austere solemnity
and Canco i Dansa No.6 use West Indian rhythms, which also greatly
influenced Xavier Montsalvatge, a Barcelona composer of a somewhat younger
generation than Mompou.
Although Mompou is perhaps best-known for his adaptation of popular
songs, the Catalan composer often had more abstract conceptions, in which he
wanted to reflect his own particular interest in the transcendence reflected in
mystic poetry or related texts. Although Mompou originally gave the title Karmas
to a group of six pieces composed between 1920 and 1921, on realising that the
Indian word did not exactly mean what he had imagined, he changed it for Charmes,
in the sense of enchantment, a trance-like state caused by a spell. The French
titles owe a debt to those which Debussy gave to his Preludes or Etudes … pour
endormir la souffrance, pour penetrer les ames, pour inspirer l 'amour, pour
les guerissons, pour evoquer l'image du passe, pour appeler la joie. In
almost all the pieces an initial harmonic situation is held with small
variations which do not give it a discursive sense, but manage to keep the
listener in a hypnotic state, in which time seems to stand still. In the first
of the Charmes (To Ease Suffering) an ostinato acompaniment is
gradually modified until it appears in the most serious register of the piano,
and establishing a framework of austere dissonance above which is repeated
almost without variation a short melodic fragment. The second (To Penetrate
Souls) features a slow melody of only five notes which are repeated in many
different ways without losing their character of growing intensity, culminating
in the dissonance of the fourth note, the most intense dissonace of all. In the
third piece (To Inspire Love) an energetic ascending theme, harmonically
almost identical to the Barri de Platja chord, serves as a backdrop for
a slow recitative. A second section introduces a cheerful ostinato above
which a cantilena of very sharp notes is developed. The dissolving of the
ostinato prepares for the recapitulation of the first part. The fourth Charme
(For Healing) is made up of a melody in dotted rhythm appearing above two
different ostinati with the muffled beat of a chord without melody. The fifth
(To Evoke Images of the Past) is divided into two parts: in the first,
undulating arpeggios appearing to imitate the natural resonances of the
harmonics sustain a prolonged melody; in the second, a new, progressively
changing ostinato introduces first a new melody, then recalls that of
the first part. The last of The Charmes (To Invoke Joy) matches its title with
a leaping, unaccompanied melody leading to an animated dance, not far removed
from any of those which feature in the Cancons i Danses. The piece ends
with a return to the first melody, now against a background of chords.
During Mompou's successful years in Paris one of the works which most
captivated his public was the one which carried the Schumann-like title Scenes
d'enfants (Scenes of childhood). In fact it consists of the Three Jeux
(games) he composed in 1915, to which he added the opening piece Cris dans
la rue (Cries in the Street), and, as an ending, the well-known Jeunes filles
au jardin (Girls in the Garden). The two movements which serve as a
framework use the Catalan song La Filla del Marxant, which gives the
work a cyclical character, in the form of an arc which opens and closes. Cris
dans la rue depicts wild games based on a children's tune harmonized with
rich overlays of fourths and fifths. A second melody leads to the first version
of La Filla del Marxant, which is replaced by the initial chatter which appears
to fade into the distance. The first of The Three Jeux, entitled Jeux
sur la Plage (Games on the Beach) begins and ends with what could be the
cries of birds or children running around on the seashore. The main body of the
piece is dedicated to a children’s' song which recurs in a circular way with a
rocking rhythm. The second Jeu begins and ends with distant cries. This time
the song's rhythm becomes rather passionate, while in the third Jeu,
identical in structure to those which preceded it, it gathers strength until it
reaches a high pitch of emotional intensity. The sadness which floats between
the games (perhaps that of the observer who can no longer participate in them)
permeates the beginning of Jeunes Filles au Jardin in which ring out some
of the most fascinating cries of the many which the work contains. A prolonged
melody, full of a sweet serenity, is cut off by the return of the initial cries,
which lead on to the new version of La Filla del Marxant. The repetition
of the opening passage marks the end of Scenes d’enfants, one of the
most frequently performed of all the works of this fascinating composer.
Victor Estape
Translation: Paul Jutsum
