Biography

The Spanish ensemble Musica Ficta has been a major force in the rediscovery and interpretation of early music in Spain, historically somewhat neglected by performers. The group has performed internationally and recorded more than 20 albums, not restricted to Spanish music and venturing into a wide variety of genres. Several ensembles use the name Musica Ficta, derived from that of a disputed practice involving the addition by performers of non-notated accidentals in, especially, choral music. Another group, from Colombia, uses the Spanish version of the word "Música," with an accent, but Musica Ficta, founded in 1992 by Raúl Mallavibarrena, uses the Latin term. Mallavibarrena was a Spanish choral director and guitarist who became interested in early music and continuo realization. He also founded the instrumental Ensemble Fontegara, which has often performed and recorded with Musica Ficta. Mallavibarrena established his own record label, Enchiriadis (the name is also an obscure early music reference, involving a medieval theory treatise), which has issued many of Musica Ficta's recordings. The ensemble has toured Europe and, more unusually, the Middle East. It is especially notable for the depth of its recording catalog, with began in the mid-'90s with the release of albums covering monuments of Renaissance Spanish choral music by Victoria, Guerrero, Morales, and others. As Musica Ficta became better established, it began to delve into more unusual repertory, devoting an album to the Spanish madrigals of Pedro Ruimonte and another to the Cancionero de Turín songbook. In the mid-2000s, they devoted performances and recordings to music from the time of Don Quixote. In collaboration with the Ensemble Fontegara they have performed large Baroque choral works from outside Spain, including those by Schütz, Handel, Bach, Pergolesi, and Monteverdi, among others. They released a recording of Victoria's Requiem mass in 2017.