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Federico Mompou
April 16, 1893 - June 30, 1987
born in Barcelona, Spain, composed during the Modern period
Biography
Mompou was a Catalan composer of lyric songs and piano miniatures whose music is characterized by Impressionist elegance, simple and direct melody, and the haunting, deep emotions of folk music.

Mompou studied piano at the Conservatorio del Liceo in Barcelona and gave his first concert at the age of 15. Three years later, with a letter of recommendation from composer Granados, he went to Paris to study piano and harmony. While there, he wrote his first piano pieces, the Impresiones intimas (1911-1914).

He became very taken with Debussy and the modern French composers, especially the spare melodiousness of Erik Satie. Mompou characterized this Satie quality in his music as "recomençament" (starting over at the beginning), a return to a kind of fundamental, basic state of realization. In emulation of Satie, Mompou adopted his method of scoring (in many of the piano works) by eliminating bar lines and key signatures, and (like Bartók and other composers) placing accidentals only before the notes to which they immediately apply. He also picked up the idea of inserting unusual and often illogically humorous comments, directions, and surreal images in the score, which actually serve to suggest the mood of a passage more adequately than the normal emotional and articulation markings -- some of Mompou's directions were "Chantez avec le fraîcheur de l'herbe humide" and "Donnez des excuses."
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