'...his principal and fundamental stylistic ancestor ... was the eccentric, iconoclastic Erik Satie." In Mompou's music, development is minimized and expression is concentrated into very small forms. He was fond of ostinato figures, bell imitations (his mother's family owned the Dencausse bell foundry and his grandfather was a bell maker), and a kind of incantatory, meditative sound, the most complete expression of which can be found in his masterpiece, Música callada (or Music of Silence), published in four books between 1959 and 1967, its title derived from the mystical poetry of Saint John of the Cross.'