Federico Mompou / Cancion y danza No.1 Federico Mompou (April 16, 1893 June 30, 1987) was a Spanish Catalan composer. He is best known for his solo piano music and his songs. Mompou was born in Barcelona (Catalunya), and studied piano there at the Conservatori del Liceu before going to Paris to study with Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix in 1911. Being rather shy, he abandoned a solo career and chose to pursue composition instead. In 1914 he returned to Barcelona, fleeing the war. His Scènes d'enfants (1915-18) inspired the French critic Émile Vuillermoz to proclaim Mompou the successor to Claude Debussy. He returned to Paris in 1921, and remained there until 1941 when he once again departed for his native Catalunya, fleeing the German occupation of Paris. An initial supporter of Franco's regime, in Barcelona he became a member of the Royal Academy of San Jorge, but otherwise lived quietly there until his death at the age of 94. Mompou is best known as a miniaturist, writing short, relatively improvisatory music often described as "delicate" or "intimate." His principal influences were French impressionism and Erik Satie, resulting in a style in which musical development is minimized, and expression is concentrated into very small forms. He was fond of ostinato figures, bell imitations and a kind of incantatory, meditative sound, a most complete example of which can be found in his masterpiece "Musica Callada", or the "voice of silence" based on the mystic poetry of St. John of the Cross. .