Ensalada (music)

The Ensalada ( cat. " salad ", " mishmash " ) is an independent Catalan musical form of the Renaissance in the way of quodlibets.

A Spanish dictionary of 1611 characterizes the Ensalada as "a genre of songs that have different metrics, and how rag rugs are picked up by different authors. Maestros de capilla put them together, to celebrate the feast of Christmas. "

It is a normally four-part (sometimes polyphonic ) compositional form and received the name for the mixture of different elements: well-known melodies, different languages ​​(Latin, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, etc. ), different types ( complicated and popular, religious and secular ), different characters ( dramatic or festive ), different textures ( unanimously, polyphonic or homophonic ). Clergy and liturgical change with worldly, always serious texts. They have a religious- dramatic basic feature, and explores how the fight of good against evil.

The majority of the Catalan composer of this era created works in this genre, and cared for their development, such as Mateu Fletxa el Vell and Mateu Fletxa el Jove, Juan Castelló, Pere Alberch Vila, Joan Brudieu, Bartomeu carceres, Francisco de Peñalosa, etc.