- “La Guerra” (The Battle) is an ensalada. Flecha the Elder composed a great number of works in this genre. 1
- An ensalada (yes, “salad”) is a humorous poem that mixes excerpts from various other poems. In music, an ensalada is a setting of such a poem, especially one that also mixes in quotations from other pieces of music.2
- Flecha composed his ensaladas for Christmas celebrations over the course of about ten years (1534/35–43). They’re a mashup of his own melodies with quotations from other composers and textual quotations in Latin, Catalan and Castilian.3
- La Guerra (“The War”) was originally written for voices. It includes both texts about war from the Bible and other sources, and warlike sound effects like “Bom bom” (cannon) and “Tif tof tif tof” (drums or marching). Full text here, p. 7.
Sources
- Maricarmen, Gómez, “Flecha, Matheo (i),” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 1, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009799.
- Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4th ed., s.v. “Ensalada” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
- Maricarmen, Gómez, “Flecha, Matheo (i),” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed October 1, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009799.
Cut IDs
48320