Federico Mompou and His Music of Silence

’s Musical Salon If there is such a thing as a “music of silence” or a “music of stillness,” then the Francophile and reclusive Catalan Federico Mompou (1893–1987) laid the foundation for this with his ultra-slow, fascinating piano pieces—late-Impressionist haikus, static aperçus, city scenes, dances, and floating sound fantasies—and his impressive body of art songs —folk tunes, elegies, settings of literary works—laid the foundation for it. Following in the footsteps of Erik Satie—and thus slowed down, reduced to the bare essentials, unadorned, and anti-virtuosic—he created extremely short, harmonically fragile, and astonishingly subtle individual movements, which he refined over decades and assembled into complex cycles. In doing so, Mompou—who was based in Barcelona but drew inspiration from the French fin-de-siècle aesthetic and therefore spent a long time in Paris—transposed the sonic world of the guitar, folkloric allusions, and the entire palette of the Iberian musical language onto the piano: harmonic effects, ethereal bell-like tones, and open intervals. In his “Mélodies,” he engaged with the Spanish vocal tradition as well as the poetry of Valéry, Bécquer, and Janés, presenting a “contest of dreams” and simply taking an infinite amount of time.

Jens Rosteck, a cultural historian with a Ph.D., biographer, musicologist, pianist, and specialist in French modernism, takes us on a literary stroll through Mompou’s hometown of Barcelona and his adopted home of Paris, during which he performs live several solo piano works and miniatures by the enigmatic loner, hermit, and sound experimenter.
The internationally acclaimed, Grammy-nominated mezzo-soprano Marisa Martins—a recognized specialist in the Spanish art song repertoire and an expert interpreter of Mompou’s works—and the versatile Freiburg-based pianist, conductor, and art song accompanist Johannes Tolle—round out the Mompou program with a series of atmospheric, haunting, and seductive piano songs.

Jens Rosteck, piano and recitation
Marisa Martins, mezzo-soprano
Johannes Tolle, piano