'When we speak of Joseph Haydn,' wrote Ernst Ludwig Gerber in his Lexicon der Tonkunstler of 1790-92, 'we think of one of our greatest men: great in small things and even greater in large… Everything speaks when he sets his orchestra in motion.' Gerber was among the first to recognise 'new and surprising' traits in Haydn's output, particularly among his Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) works of the early 1770s. Espousing spontaneity and passion as sources of creativity, Sturm und Drang despised the new rationalism of the Enlightenment, offering darkness and pessimism to counterpoise its orderly logic.
After pursuing a Rolling Stones-styled blend of rock and country elements on their first two albums, Nazareth segued into a harder rocking style with 1973's Razamanaz. The resulting album has a lot of energy and drive and much of this can be credited to Roger Glover's production, which tempers the group's tendency to experiment with different musical styles by imposing an overall sound that play's up the group's hard rock edge. The end result is an album that rocks consistently throughout but works in intriguing musical elements to keep things interesting.
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.