Cançons i danses

No.1: Moderato    (1921)

No.3: Modéré (1926)

No.6: Cantabile espressivo (1942)

Although he had a thoroughly professional training as a pianist in Barcelona and Paris, where he also studied harmony, Mompou did not have the benefit of a conservatoire education as a composer – which explains not only his limitations in that last respect but also his individuality. During his years in Paris, before the First World War and between the wars,one way he compensated for what he had missed was to get to know the composers he admired most. Satie and Debussy, prominent among them. While he was not equipped to emulate much of Debussy’s art, he found Satie a congenial model. Just the look of Mompou’s music, without key signatures and bar lines, calls Satie to mind. As for the sound of it, the way the right-hand melody hovers over the bass in first part of Cançones i danses No.1 is clearly reminiscent of the great gymnopedist.

Mompou wrote his 14 Cançones i danses over a period of nearly 40 years, which makes them a fascinating guide to his development during that time. What most of them have in common, however, is that they are based on Catalan material. Unlike Albéniz, who was also a Catalan, Mompou took little interest in the music of Andalusia. Cançons i danses No.1 is based on the Catalan popular song La Filla del Carmesi and the Dansa de Castelterçol. No.3 begins with Noi de la mare, a Christmas cradle song, mostly in right-hand octaves over an arpeggio accompaniment, and concludes with a lively version of the sardana, the national dance of Catalonia, represented by two original tunes (one in 6/8, the other in 2/4). No.6 is a little different in that the sustained and highly expressive song melody is followed a dance in cheerfully complex West Indian rhythms.