Spanish composer and pianist.

Born on 16 April 1893 in Barcelona, and passed away in the same city on 30 June 1987. Son of Frederic Mompou and Josefina Dencausse, and brother of the painter Josep Mompou.

He received his first piano lessons from Pere Serra, who was also his teacher at the Conservatori de Música del Liceu. He attended the Écoles Françaises until 1907 and later studied at the Colegio de los Hermanos La Salle. In 1908, he gave his first concert at the concert hall of the Orfeó Barcelonès. He composed his first piece, "Planny" after attending Gabriel Fauré's concerts in Barcelona in 1909. In 1911 he moved to Paris, where he received piano lessons from Louis Joseph Diémer and Ferdinand Motte-Lacroix. While in the French capital, he became interested in symbolism and the poetry of Maurice Maeterlinck, which made him decide to become a composer.

World War I forced Mompou to return to Barcelona, where he met the composer Manuel Blancafort, who became a lifelong friend, and finished his "Impressions íntimes" and "Scènes d'enfants". By 1920 he was back in Paris, and the following year his mentor Motte-Lacroix premiered "Cuatro canciones catalanas", "Scènes d'enfants" and "Cants màgics". His compositional style was noticed and admired by fellow composers such as Joaquín Nin, Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud and Manuel de Falla, with whom he corresponded. He began writing "Preludis I-VI" and "Altitud" in 1927. He was a member of the Grup de Compositors Independents de Catalunya, created in Barcelona in 1931. He travelled to Paris several more times until 1941, when he finally settled down in Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War. That year he met Carmen Bravo at a piano competition, and the two were married in 1957. Being friend of the poet Josep Janés, he began to compose the lieder cycle "Combat del somni" in 1942.

In 1945, Mompou won first place in the symphonic and chamber music category of the National Competition of Spanish Composers and Musicologists, as well as the National Music Prize. He joined the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi in 1952. His music for the ballet "The House of Birds", orchestrated by John Lanchbery, was a great success. The work premiered in London in 1955, with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan, and subsequently travelled to Granada in 1956 and Barcelona's Teatre del Liceu in 1957. In 1959 he was inducted into the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and in 1963 he composed "Improperios", an oratorio commissioned for Cuenca's Sacred Music Week in 1964.

By the 1970s, Mompou was nationally and internationally a renowned figure. He received several tributes in the United States, the Gold Medal for Cultural Merit from the Provincial Council of Barcelona (1976), the Gold Medal for Artistic Merit from Barcelona City Council (1977), an honorary doctorate from the Universitat de Barcelona (1979) and the Gold Medal of the Sociedad General de Autores de España (1984), among other distinctions. As a composer, in addition to the aforementioned works, he is known for the piano pieces "Suburbis" (1917), "Cançons i danses" (1918-1972) and the four notebooks of "Música callada" (1951-1967), based on the poems of San Juan de la Cruz.

El archivo de Federico Mompou se conserva en la Biblioteca de Cataluña. Contiene partituras, correspondencia, monografías, documentación personal, fotografías, folletos, programas de mano, recortes de prensa y publicaciones periódicas. El fondo fue donado en 1997 por Carmen Bravo, viuda del pianista y compositor.