MOMPOU: Piano Music vol. 4

Masó, Jordi

8.554727

The title of Mompou's masterpiece Música callada comes from the Cántico Espiritual of the Spanish mystic, St John of the Cross, where the expression música callada (music without sound) is complemented by soledad sonora (solitude that clamours). The poet explains 'that music is without sound as far as natural senses and capacities are concerned' but 'solitude sounds out loud through spiritual capacities'. In spite of the apparent clarity of the metaphor, its sense for Mompou was 'difficult enough to explain in a language different from Spanish'. Beyond general understanding of these words, they seem to have a personal significance for the composer, only accessible through his music. • Although each of the 28 pieces has the brevity inherent in Mompou's musical language, as a whole the work represents his most ambitious achievement. The four volumes appeared between 1959 and 1967, the period of his definitive maturity, shortly after he had secured his emotional and domestic stability by marrying Carmen Bravo and while he enjoyed the company of an intimate group of friends, Montsalvatge, Turull, and Valls, with whom he could share the worries of that time in Barcelona. His prestige as a composer, almost as a 'living classic', was daily confirmed. His Música Callada is a summary of the most personal elements of his musical language, penetrating to the heart of the 'mysteries of nature', but yet not without echoes of popular music. The work represents his position as 'backward' in respect of the increasingly prominent avant-garde. Mompou renounces the idea of perpetual progress in Art, claiming that 'in this climbing of rugged peaks it is necessary sometimes to take rest'. Yet at the same time his music here reaches the highest level of harmonic difficulty and abstraction possible without ceasing to be his own.

CD x 1

Naxos

4/8/02

636943472729