Luogo e data di registrazione		Chapel of the Irish College, Leuven (Belgium) - 18/21 October 1990
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineers / Editing		Andreas Neubronner, Markus Heiland (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		Sony / Vivarte - SK 46 699 - (1 CD) - durata 61' 06" - (p) 1991 - DDD
	Cover Art		"Autumn" by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) - Photo: Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin
	Note		-

Mateus Flecha el Viejo and His Ensaladas Mateo Flecha el Viejo was born in Prades in 1481. Little is known about his youth except that he received his musical education from Juan Castelló at the cathedral school of Barcelona. Between 1523 and 1525 he served at Lérida Cathedral, first as a singer, then as maestro de capilla. Thereafter, he was engaged at the court of the archbishop of Sevilla, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Lunda, Duque de Infantado, and later by the brother of Emperor Charles V, Fernando de Aragón, Duke of Calabria in Valencia where he remained until 1543. During this time, Flecha earned a reputation as an ensalada composer. In 1544 Jacques Moderne printed Flecha's ensalada La Justa, the first of a volume entitled Le difficile des chansons. La Justa is divided into ten parts and named La Batailla en Spagnol. It was whilst in the circles of the Emperor, at the court of Duke of Calabria, that Flecha probably made the acquaintance of the Flemish Polyphonists. From 1526 onwards the royal court-chapel of Emperor Charles V resided frequently in Spain and in 1537 the Flemish maestro de capilla, Nicolaas Gombert, travelled with twenty Flemish musicians to Madrid where he accepted the position of director of the royal court-chapel. In 1543 Mateo Flecha became maestro de capilla in Arévalo to the court of the sixteen and nine year-old princesses Maria and Juana, daughters of the Emperor Charles V. In addition to some choristers, the royal court-chapel comprised five singers (one of them a contrabas) and several instrumentalists (including Antonio de Cabezón), some of them maestros de dancar and “tres mozos que sirven de cantar en el facistol” (three young men to sing at the liturgic reading desk). The many social events at the court of the two young princesses were an excellent opportunity for the court musicians to perform their repertory of comedies, farsas and entremetz (theatrical performances of poetry and music). Indeed, a comedy by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) was performed at the engagement celebrations of Doña María and Maximilian II of Austria. After this marriage had taken place and María had left Spain in 1548, Flecha disappeared from the court records until his death in 1553 at the age of 72 in the convent of Poblet (Tarragona). Nevertheless, he became immortal with his collection of ensaladas, which represent the climax of this exclusively Spanish musical form. What is an ensalada? According to Juan Díaz Rengijo (Arte Poétíca Española, Salamanca 1592, cap. 64) the text of an ensalada is composed of stanzas in which the poetry is interjected with verses from another poem. The stanzas tell us the real story but are interrupted regularly by insertions and comments which do not add any meaning to the proper story. As a result, the whole obtains a colourful, burlesque and bizarre character - the word ensalada (mixed salad) expresses well its meaning. Metre, usage of the language and contents are free. The only directive, thus Rengijo, is the taste of the creator. The Portuguese writer Gil Vicente (1465-1536) can be considered as the first who wrote texts with these characteristics, although he did not call them ensaladas. It is significant that in the introduction to the publication of Flecha's ensaladas he and Gil Vicente are credited with the invention of this genre. Sixteen texts of Gil Vicente's plays are written in a mixture of Portuguese and Castilian language. Treating classical subjects, he doesn't respect the serious tone but choses to give free play to his fantasy. As a result, the language in his texts contains a variety of realistic, comic and sarcastic fragments following each other and ending in tender, hearty passages. The texts of Flecha's ensaladas are an extreme mixture of comic and dramatical texts, ironical fragments and moralities, popular passages and liturgical quotations. In addition, the texts are written in various languages: Latin, French, Italian, Catalan, Castilian, Portuguese and a kind of nonsensical Negro-language (in La Negrina). The librettos of Flecha's ensaladas are full of references to Spanish popular theatre. Thus in La Negrina a character called Pasqual appears and is asked to sing a song. This legendary character of Pasqual appears in the theatrical world as a clownish type of negro, a buffoon who makes a mess of the story. Therefore, it is not unusual that he sings a song completely inappropriate to the story. In La Justa Don Paparipote, a theatrical nickname for an evil-minded person, appears. (In reality “Paparipote” is a disdainful nickname for the countrymen.) The musical structure of the ensaladas of Flecha is called compositum mixtum, a constant mixture of rational polyphony with quotations from popular songs and descriptive fragments. Thanks to Flecha's ensaladas some Catalan popular songs have been preserved. According to Rengijo the music has to correspond to the lively and narrative tone of the text. The burlesque mixture of different languages, quotations from popular songs and polyphony belonged to the musical practice in Spain, where more than in the North, it left its mark on the polyphony. All Mateo Flecha`s ensaladas are thus a burlesque story more or less related to Christmas. Regardless of the basic story, it always finishes in an ensalada with a happy ending around the crib, but not before all obstacles have been cleared,violent battles have been fought or the bad have been brought on to the right path. In El Fuego fire is used as a symbol for the sinful world. If we can believe Flecha, the whole of Spain is on fire, a smelting-furnace is threatening Christianity, but do not fear: Maria sends us water to extinguish the fire in the person of Jesus. With the birth of Jesus, a disaster is avoided and the fire kept under control. The uproarious episodes in this ensalada are interrupted by one of the most dramatic texts: it refers to the suffering Nero caused in the year 64 before Christ when he set fire to the city of Rome, in which a lot of children and elderly people perished. The music in this fragment has a scarce meditative character. La Negrina is a naive pastoral play in which the birth of Jesus is announced. The bucolic scenes alternate with Catalan popular songs and end in a vivid dialogue amongst the shepherds on their way to Bethlehem. In the last part of La Negrina a Negro text emergcs proving that Spain had not forgotten the occupation by the Moors at the time. La Justa tells the story of a tournament amongst mediaeval nobility involving squires, courtiers and knights. Adam loses the fight against Lucifer, but once more Christianity is saved in the nick of time by a caballero novel - the God of Israel. He enters the arena and defeats Lucifer with ease. Particularly pithy in this ensalada are the descriptive fragments and comments, sometimes with a sarcastic undertone. After Adam has lost the fight (in the third part) Flecha advises the sinners to rely upon someone else because love cannot be found by everyone. No manuscript exists which is identical in language and text. In the manuscript Madrid (Private Library of Don Bartolomé March Servera, ms. R. 6832) the greatest part of the text is transposed in Castilian. In other manuscripts parts of the text have been altered. In the sixteenth century print (Libro de Musica para Víhuela íntitulado Orphenica Lyra) La Justa is arranged for one voice part accompanied by Vihuela. The ensaladas are written to serve as recreation together with entremetz and the farsas. The variety of ingredients used to compose the ensaladas explains clearly the name given to this genre. In a way, this kind of art can be compared to the art of painting of Arcimboldo (1530-1593) whose portraits were composed, like a puzzle, of different kinds of fruit, vegetables, flowers, fish and poultry and create the same bizarre and fantastic atmosphere as Flecha's ensaladas. Paul Van Nevel