Biography
Having studied with Joan Castello in Barcelona while performing as a singer at Lerida Cathedral, Flecha advanced to chapel master in Lerida and then entered the employ of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y Luna, Duque del Infantando. He later worked under the Duke of Calabria and served as chapel master at Arevalo for the two sisters of Philip II. Although other composers had applied the label "ensalada" to selected pieces, Flecha shaped—and in the view of some, originated—this extended genre of Spanish-text music. The works ran quite long, yet Flecha kept momentum alive by drawing on familiar street melodies and an unmatched liveliness that avoided clichéd pitfalls. Through varied musical textures combined with interwoven textual references aimed at a clear purpose and endpoint, his versions of the ensalada raised the form to its peak.