In today’s video I talk about Federico Mompou’s Canción y danza no 6. Mompou’s 15 Canciónes y danzas were a career-long project—the first was written in 1921, and the last in 1979. Unlike the majority of the other Canciónes y dances, no. 6 (written in 1941) is entirely original, and is not based on any Catalan folk melodies.
In this video I also talk a bit about some of the expressive techniques that made Mompous’s piano playing so special, in particular his use of unwritten arpeggios.
Unwritten arpeggios were an expressive device much used (and sometimes abused) by keyboard players from the 16th-19th centuries, but this style of playing fell out of mainstream use in the 20th century, and is still frowned upon in academic circles, although great artists from the past like Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alfred Cortot, Vladimir Horowitz, and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli up to present day artists like Andras Schiff, and Stephen Hough have made marvelous use of this expressive device.