Flecha, Mateo

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Flecha, Mateo

Flecha, Mateo, Spanish composer; b. Prades, Tarragona, c. 1530; d. Solsona, Lerida, Feb. 20, 1604. He received his musical education from his uncle, also named Mateo Flecha (1481–1553); was boy chorister in the court chapel at Arevalo. In 1564 he entered the imperial chapel in Vienna; by 1579 was in Prague with the Emperor; Philip III made it possible for him to return to Spain as abbot of Portella in 1599. He publ. a book of madrigals in Venice (1568), and the collection Las ensaladas (Prague, 1581), containing “ensaladas” (quodlibets, comic songs) by his uncle, and some by himself. This collection was brought out in a modern ed. by Higinio Angles, with an introductory essay on the Flechas (Barcelona, 1954).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire