The endecha is a subgenre of lament, planto, found in early Iberian music. It usually indicates a metrical composition of 4 verses with 6 or 7 syllables. The endecha is essentially a musical form; a hexasyllable.

The verb endechar - to lament, to sing endechas, is rarely encountered, though found in testimonies by Alfonso de Palencia

Alfonso de Palencia

Alfonso Fernández de Palencia , was a Castilian pre-Renaissance historiographer, lexicographer, and humanist....

. It comes from the time before the Expulsion of 1492

Alhambra decree

The Alhambra Decree was an edict issued on 31 March 1492 by the joint Catholic Monarchs of Spain ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories and possessions by 31 July of that year.The edict was formally revoked on 16 December 1968, following the Second...

, and was used within the Jewish community, though popular poems in Galicia already used this type of versification.

Compositions

• A prelude in Dm by Francisco Tárrega
  Francisco Tárrega
  Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea was an influential Spanish composer and guitarist of the Romantic period.-Biography:Tárrega was born on 21 November 1852, in Vila-real, Castelló, Spain...
  
  
• 5 Endechas for classical guitar by Alfonso Montes. ECH769

Recordings

• Endechar - Lament for Spain (Sephardic Romances and Songs). Capilla Antigua de Chinchilla, Ferrero. Naxos 2010.