Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | N | Notes

Las ensaladas (Praga, 1581).

Article Excerpt
Las ensaladas (Praga, 1581): Con un suplemento de obras del genero. Estudio y edicion Maricarmen Gomez Muntane. Valencia: Generalitat Valenciana/Institut Valencia de la Musica, c2008. [Vol. 1: Estudio, 193 p. Vol. 2: Edicion, 464 p. Vol. 3: Ed. facs. de las partes vocals (4 partbooks: tiple, iv p., 56 fols.; alto, iv p., 54 fols.; tenor, iv p., 53 fols.; baxo, iv p., 51 fols.). ISBN 978-84-482489-1-8 (vol. 1), 978-84-482489-2-5 (vol. 2), 978-84-482489-3-2 (vol. 3), 978-84-482489-0-1 (set). [euro]55]

Among listeners and performers of early Iberian music, the ensalada is considered one of the most popular and rewarding musical genres. Not too much scholarly attention has been given, though, to this quintessentially Renaissance repertoire. True, the New Grove (2001) has a short and excellent article on the genre, but the second edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1994-2008) includes it only as part of the discussion of the quodlibet; furthermore, major surveys of Western music history, such as that by Richard Taruskin, do not even mention it (The Oxford History of Western Music, 6 vols. [New York: Oxford University Press, 2005]). And although there are a few modern editions of the music, there is no single monograph that deals with it in a comprehensive manner. A case in point: to my knowledge, the only doctoral dissertation dedicated to the ensalada is a performance thesis, not a full-fledged musicological study (Roger Hamilton Wesby, "The Ensaladas of Mateo Flecha el viejo: Nonsensical Quodlibets or a Genre of Deeper Meaning?" [D.M. diss., Indiana University, 1995]). So, if there were to be only a single merit to the publication under review, it would have to be its wide-ranging ambition to cover all angles of the genre, its...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!