Is This Composer the 20th Century's Chopin?
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- Опубліковано 22 чер 2023
- Federico Mompou (1893 - 1987) was a Spanish (Catalan) composer and pianist. His music is highly individual. Like Chopin, he wrote almost exclusively for piano. Early in his career, he developed a compositional style which he called “primitivism”. He wanted his music to appeal directly to the senses and the spirit, with a raw, almost magical power. Like Erik Satie before him, he preferred to dispense with bar lines, time signatures and complex forms and developments. His melodies were derived from the sounds of folk songs and Gregorian chant; his unique harmony was influenced by Debussy and Ravel and Scriabin, and the resonance of bells in his family’s bell foundry, which he listened to as a child. Much of the power of his music derives from the combination of innocence and simplicity in his melodic style, and the rich enigmatic sonority of his chords. These elements give his music its haunting, dream-like quality.
'Jeunes Filles au Jardin' is the fourth in a set of evocative piano pieces called 'Scenes d’Enfants’ published in 1921.
Frederico Mompou: Jeunes Filles au Jardin
Pianist: Matthew King.
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Edited by Ian Coulter ( www.iancoultermusic.com )
Produced and directed by Ian Coulter & Matthew King
First heard this piece played by Yunchan Lim for an encore and was immediately enchanted. I thought it was so thoughtful of him to send his audience off into the night with this dreamlike piece. The descriptions fit the melody and composition perfectly. Love, love, love it.
Mompou?? Why have I never heard of him? He's incredible! I'd love to orchestrate some of his work!
Yes, Mompou is certainly one of the most important piano composers of the 20th century but his work - because he tended to write on a small scale and the pieces are modest and reflective, and intentionally 'spiritual' with a strong connection to Catalonia, they have always tended to be overlooked. A few famous pianists (Alicia di Larrocha, Michelangeli and more recently Volados, Yuja Wang, Trifanov etc.) have championed his music, but it's still largely unknown. That's a great idea - to try to orchestrate these sonorities. It's challenging!
Seeing as Mompou himself sought for his music in his own words “the greatest expressive force with maximum simplicity and economy of means, as well as a return to primitivism in order to present the musical idea naked and pure” - maybe you should look to another composer to complicate. There's nothing wrong allowing pieces specifically composed for the piano to remain that way. Don't Ravel that shit up! 😘
I think it's possibly to orchestrate a Mompou piece and retain its expressive force and simplicity.
@@harpsitardo That is something to consider, but the main reason I’d like to orchestrate his work is actually for that specific challenge. I wouldn’t say I envisioned something maximalist, anyway. Something more like an eclectic chamber orchestra, probably with some pitched percussion and a bass clarinet. I also know he loved bells because he grew up in a bell foundry, so I could experiment with that as well.
And I would say Ravel is my favorite composer and orchestrator, so Ravel-ing stuff up sounds super fun 😂😂
@@themusicprofessor I think all of this appeals to me not only as a musician but as a human. I’m not Spanish or Latin by any means but I’ve always had a connection with Spanish music (particularly Albéniz), and being a deeply spiritual person as well… I knew I recognized the emotional core of this piece. I’m going to do my research before I attempt anything but I’m very, very attracted to his music!
Thanks for presenting this beautifully played gem. I have loved and played music by Mompou for years, and am amazed that his wonderful compositions are not more widely known.
Thank you - yes, his music is so wonderfully evocative. It's wonderful to play too.
I've never heard Mompou, before. How subtle and cool!
And that is without you, nor most other people, identifying some of his notes which echo traditional tunes or even the hourly jingle of RNE, which was often heard like punctuating people's homes' silence. Because it was a very long silence in Spain, between 1939 and 1975. Especially for Catalans. Listen at 0:52: ua-cam.com/video/wvcxwKOo0vo/v-deo.htmlsi=Q4zGCFMUDoLZjIqN
Radios were often on, in otherwise quiet homes. You wouldn't pay attention. But then, down the corridor or coming from some neighbour's appartment, you would hear those notes breaking the silence, certifying that it was not an illusion: time was still since 1939.
Mompou is one of my favorites. He creates a magical atmosphere with every piece.
Lots of past and future echoes in his music but it’s always quite distinctly him. I remember my sister learning some of the Songs & Dances. I always liked Gitanes.
Absolutely right: it's always him - the harmony is absolutely unique.
Thank you for analyzing and explaining the music as we listen to it. It helps those of us less knowledgeable about music to appreciate and enjoy it.
Thank you. It's lovely to know that it's helpful.
I love this piece and Mompou's Variations on Chopin's Prelude in A Major! This piece helped me find the beauty that Mompou writes.
The variations on Chopin's Prelude are astonishing. Visionary and achingly beautiful...and, typically for Mompou, somehow psychologically probing, spiritual and mysterious. Impossible to put into words in fact!
In my opinion if I arranged it for the orchestra its like:
Woodwinds: 0:05
Strings: 0:12
Solo Flute and The strings: 0:26
Bass note on the Basoon, Melody on the flute, ect: 0:45
Same passage with the Woodwinds: 1:09
Strings: 1:12
Strings: 1:23 (because it sounds like Ravel. Kind of?)
Strings and woodwinds: 1:52
Strings: 2:22
Woodwinds: 2:26
Strings: 2:32
Strings and woodwinds: 2:46
Cellos and basses: 2:48
Glockenspiel: 2:50
You should have a go at scoring it!
Thank you for the introduction to a composer who straddle Romanticism and Impressionism, with a hint of Satie thrown into the mix.
Absolutely right! Mompou's rather subtle connection to the Spanish tradition and Catalan folk music is also important.
@Renshen1957 that's a wonderful description! Captures this piece's essence very well.
We need more 'essence extractors' like this chanel, keep em coming !
I find Mompou's music intensely beautiful. I love that it defies simple categorization and while it is modern, it never feels like he's trying to be avant-garde as a means of breaking the mould or being part of the lineage of innovators. It always feels deeply personal and spiritual. There is this constant usage of fourths throughout much of his catalogue but it's not always overtly 'quartal' it's flexible and expressive.
Audio quality has greatly improved from the last few videos!
Good to hear!
Wonderful composer. Música Callada is a masterpiece.
I agree - some of the finest piano miniatures of the mid 20th century. But then all Mompou's piano works are masterpieces
Richie Bierach's improvisation on Musica Callada is brilliant and only adds to the splendor of the piece.
So jazzy and great
Beautiful music and I love the simple graphical manner in which you explain its themes.
Thank you!
Mompou és un compositor magnífic. Quan vaig tocar pel meu recital de piano a Barcelona, necessitava tocar una música catalana obligatòriament i vaig tocar una de la seves Música Callada. Molt bonic. Harmonització increïble.
¡Un recital de piano en Barcelona sería maravilloso! ¡Es una ciudad maravillosa que debería estar tan orgullosa de Mompou como de Gaudí!
One of my favourite composers thank you for the video!
Love your sharing of Musical ideas. Videos of lesser known composers such a treat.
Love your videos!
Such a beautiful and interesting work! Thank you for sharing this gorgeous piece :)
Very nice presentation, and I loved the old font you used for the text. Thank you.
Beautiful! I must find more music by this composer.
Nice find
Love this! This makes me want to learn it now
How wonderful this is. Mompou - that’s a fair wedge of my listening time sorted out for a few days.
Wow, thanks for sharing his music.
I even feel shame about I didn't know his music until now...
Thanks again for showing wonderful inspiration!
Yey I though I would never seen this channel show musicians from my country :D
You can be proud of Mompou. He has long been a favourite composer of mine.
Goooood introduction.
*Literally* , caught the image of the sounds.
oooh thank you for introducing me to a new composer! always looking for beautiful 20th century music - I think I will come to enjoy Mompou veyr much :)
Lovely composition, and explication by Professor seems right on to my inexpert ears. I'd like to hear more works from this Mompou.
This is amazing! Never heard of him. Definitely hear some wistful Debussy in there too!
That melody in fourths is unbelievably beautiful, I need to learn this piece for my wife! Thank you so much for the video!
I really love Mompou’s music.
Their given names are close enough! 😂😂
I should really dig into his music a bit more. Funnily enough, I was introduced to his music through a Chopin album, that just so happened to feature a couple of his pieces. My favorite was "El Lago". I really enjoyed what I heard!
El Lago is indeed marvellous. We hope to do a video on it soon.
Such wonderful chord sonorities and groupings
Yes - aren't they fab!?
This is really beautiful. How have I never heard it before now?
Lovely
Very relaxing
It's strange, unpredictable & lovely. The juxtapositions of emotions are awesome & I loved the way in which it ended. I'm unfamiliar with this composer; thank you so much for sharing this piece! 💕🙏
You should definitely check out more of his music!
Mompou is one of my favorite composers. His uniqueness is very appealing. He should be more known in mt opinion. Thank you for this.
I agree.
Probably the saddest piece ever written in history, thank you so much for sharing with the world
I'm impressed with the visuals in this video as well. @themusicprofessor not sure if you'll see this comment but I wonder more about what that process is like for you, and how you found the artwork, or if it's original? Thanks!
An underrated Spanish composer!
I didnt know him, thank you for giving me a new obsession
He's amazing, isn't he?
@@themusicprofessor I really love his, paisajes, I listen to them a lot in the weeks I found out about him. Really amazing how much discipline and care he achieves these glassy, almost fragile, colours of the piano I didn’t think were possible.
That was nice.
Heard this played by Arcadi Volodos and loved it so much I bought the sheet music and learned it in a couple days. Beautiful.
Volodos plays Mompou very beautifully!
Great and longtime Mompou fan!!! But Mompou is the second best 20th Century Urban Nationalist with Sati being the first best(possibly only because he was the first. The idea of using urban music may have come from ragtime or NOLA Jazz. Intellectually, this next step was clearly in the air (think Mahler). But S & M took it to it highest places while Stravinsky "L'Histoire de Soldat" just visited the town and moved on. (Yes! I made up Urban Nationalist Music but I think it truly describes and makes a movement of a whole bunch of sonically connected... Miles Davis Kinda Blue and Sketches of Spain and Modal Jazz ....to the urban rhythms of a composers beloved home towns."
I came here after seeing Michelangeli have one of his pieces on the Great Pianists of the 20th Century. It is on his 2nd set, aka # 69 of the series. I had never heard of him, either. I like it. Perhaps Liszt, in his later years, would have liked this.
Never heard this piece before, but I may well have discovered a new favorite here. The Debussy influence seems apparent (to my ears at least), especially during the first 25 seconds of the piece but also at the end. Right after the first 25 seconds, Satie wants to have his say as well. The only other composition that I have heard by Mompou is Cancion no 6, which moves me like very few other pieces of music. I am astounded that these two pieces are by the same composer.
Thank you. Very interesting comments. Yes, his music has a unique quality: direct, spontaneous, profoundly melodic, with its own unique and sonorous harmony, and always hauntingly evocative.
@@themusicprofessor Thank you, although my comments here were just first impressions from my layman's ears. But direct and hauntingly evocative are certainly apt descriptions of these compositions, although I feel that the moods and the musical languages are quite different between this piece and the Cancion no 6 (hence my great surprise that they were by the same composer). But I have already listened to this piece several times. I love Debussy, Ravel and Satie, without being able to explain why the music of these composers strike a particular chord in me, and this piece manages to strike exactly the same chord. A very welcome surprise indeed.
Does the original include the inconsistent bar lines, especially in the left hand? Love the vid!
Yes absolutely. The eccentricities of notation are all Mompou's own.
Amazing visualization!!!! May I ask: do you so all of it “manually”, or is there some specific music-score software that you use?
Thank you! It's done manually
@@themusicprofessor Oh, wow. I’m bowing down to you in admiration and awe.
Reminds me of Gershwin in the best way
Reminds me of Ravel in some places.
Very interesting indeed, but I would like to also hear something from him which is not largo. For some reason, unknown to me, all modern music is super-slow and lacks completely the contrasts of older schools, between slow and fast, rhythmic and laid back.
Mompou wrote a long set of Cancions y Danzas which contrast a slow 'song' and a quick 'dance'. The dances are all fast and rhythmic. e.g. ua-cam.com/video/BnV7xO7pswY/v-deo.html at 1.55
Which visualizer is this?
As a catalan musician, thank you so much for sharing this and also for spelling his name properly with his real Catalan name. Frederic, NOT Federico. Same with Pau Casals, not Pablo Casals. Thank you :D
Very nice! I reminded more of Satie than Chopin however.
I don't disagree, but as I pointed out in response to another comment, there are very striking parallels with Chopin: both composers wrote almost exclusively for solo piano; both composers composed very poetically for the instrument with a marvellous sensitivity to harmonic colour and rhythm; both composers produced a remarkable set of preludes; both composers composed a remarkable set of dances associated with their homelands (Chopin's Mazurkas and Mompou's Cançions y Danzas), and Mompou's largest work for piano is his beautiful set of variations on a theme by Chopin, which evokes Chopin in a unique way.
Satie meets Ravel.
I always wondered, do composers really inwardly hear these harmonies or do they have to try on the piano how they sound.
I guess it depends on their inner ear. I suspect that, for Mompou, the actual sound of the piano was a key part of the compositional process.
His name was FREDERIC Mompou. A catalan name.
Che brano è?
See the video description
_WHEN REFERRING TO A PERSON’S BIRTHPLACE, IT IS CORRECT FORM TO MENTION THE COUNTRY OF BIRTH, IF NO FURTHER SPECIFICATION IS MADE, NOT THE STATE, REGION, PROVINCE, MUNICIPALITY, OR CITY: FEDERICO MOMPOU WAS SPANISH, NOT CATALONIAN; CATALUÑA IS A REGION IN THE COUNTRY OF SPAIN._
На вопрос сразу хочется сразу ответить- Скрябин , Дебюсси , Рахманинов , Равель , Пуленк и Мессиан, Шенберг и Веберн разве не более достойны и значительны???
Все композиторы, которых вы упомянули, замечательные! Но Момпоу был очень тихим гением и гораздо менее известным. (Кстати, в его музыке очень заметно влияние Скрябина).
Many interesting tones and harmonic movements, but feels quite empty as a whole. Feels like an “etude”.
Because his last name is “Frederic” so that’s why.
Yes, although there's a bit more to it than that!
No, he is not. More like Satie with sharps.
There's a Satie-esque element but the connection with Chopin is profound actually.
He is real good, but do not compare him to Chopin. Maybe to Debussy or Gershwin. But Chopin?? C’mon now..
Why not? There are very striking parallels: both composers wrote almost exclusively for solo piano; both composers composed very poetically for the instrument with a marvellous sensitivity to harmonic colour and rhythm; both composers produced a remarkable set of preludes; both composers composed a remarkable set of dances associated with their homelands (Chopin's Mazurkas and Mompou's Cançions y Danzas); Mompou's largest work for piano is his beautiful set of variations on a theme by Chopin, which evokes Chopin in a unique way. A 20th century Chopin? Absolutely!
I think this is a good example of why I dislike most 20th century classical music. The relentless push to invent harmony has simply resulted in alienation of the listener in almost a nacissistic fashion. Batrok, Shoenberg, Ives, Berg, most of the German Expressionists; it's so deliberately toxic and unpleasant. All sentiment is sacrificed on the altar of intellectualism, and the result is uninteresting. Sentimentality was relegated to "popular" and "film" music, and openly scorned by the crticial and academic classes. But the emperor has no clothes, in my opinion.
A few 20th century composers bucking the trend, of course: Rachmaninov, Shostakovich (most of the time), some Hindemith. Some Barber (but too little). Copeland.
Im not of that opinion, you would never say that this modern composer are "unexpressive" and i think this is a very semplistic and polarizing view. You can't say turn of the century music is inexpressive while taking for example Berg and his Wozzek: one of the most dramatic and Emotional music ever written. I had a similar view of yours some time ago, but i tried with my best to understand these giants of how you say "intellectualism". What you maybe are refearing to simply people that tried to expand the scope of possibilities in music and thats why they are so loved by accademycs. Everything has its context and history: we live in a society now of bland and superficial
homogeneity that and our ear has grown a bit lazy over the years since going to concert has become a luxury and not a way to pass time. (well i hope i convinced just a bit, and if this is a uncoherent mess of a comment, im sorry i'll try do my best next time)
Thank you, this very much encapsulates my opinion on the topic of 20th Century classical music.
Although I have some soft spots for composers like Korngold and some pieces of Schoenberg, at large I greatly dislike atonality and the 20th Century‘s quest for novel harmony just for the sake of novelty.
I may be a traditional elitist on the topic but nobody can convince me that they enjoy pieces like Bergs Piano Sonata no. 1 the same way that they would enjoy for example Tchaikovskys Piano Concerto No. 1.
Intriguing to find such an inoffensively calm and poetic piano piece kicking off these sorts of reactions. Just a few observations: firstly, I have to say that any attempt to drag Mompou's music into some sort of culture-wars rant about 'the Commie avant-garde' is pretty absurd. Secondly, I genuinely respect people's musical preferences, and I think that is really what we are talking about here, so I think we need to learn to respect difference: some people love Gesualdo, some love Tchaikovsky, some love Berg, some love Korngold, some love Ghanaian drumming, some love Arctic Monkeys (I happen to love all of them - even Arctic Monkeys who I heard live last week!) The great shame of the 20th century has been the sheer weight of ideological baggage that has attached itself to the rich and diverse stream of music. It's a terrible shame because music itself is a universe of marvels, and a reflection of the endless multifaceted wonders of human imagination at its purest. There is no question that the great journey into dissonance and complexity in the 20th century (roughly equivalent to the journey into abstraction in art, and the linguistic experiments of artists like Joyce, Eliot, Woolf etc.) was a brave and necessary journey, because all regions of artistic expression need to be explored. To dismiss the utter genius of Bartok or Schoenberg is a profound mistake... you can disagree with them, yes! You can say (as I do frequently) that there are problems with Schoenberg's invention of dodecaphony as a notional solution to 20th century composition, but to dismiss these amazing composers out of hand is a mistake. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with the mysterious poetry of Mompou, who's music was always intended to bring piece and joy to the soul...
I find it very difficult indeed (impossible?) to believe that you watched & listened to the whole video. If you had, I’m sure you would not have made that particular judgement on this mainly tonal, beautifully expressive & richly harmonic little piece, which has much more in common with Chopin & Ravel & Spanish folk music than with Schoenberg etc!
This is really bad.
Thanks for the encouragement friend!
@@themusicprofessor the piece, not the playing!
@maxfreeney7943 - maybe listen to it again a few times. I think it's a lot better than you first thought...
grande mompou