Zacara da Teramo
Encyclopedia
Antonio Zacara da Teramo (also Zacar, Zacara, Zaccara, Zacharie, Zachara; b. probably between 1350 and 1360 – d. between May 19, 1413 and mid-September 1416) was an Italian
composer, singer, and papal
secretary of the late Trecento
and early 15th century. He was one of the most active Italian composers around 1400, and his style bridged the periods of the Trecento, ars subtilior
, and beginnings of the musical Renaissance
.
, in northern Abruzzo
(Kingdom of Naples
), not far from the Adriatic coast.
Nothing is known about his life until he is recorded in Rome
, in 1390, as a teacher at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia
; the document mentions that he was not young at the time of this appointment, but his exact age is not given. In the next year he became a secretary to Pope Boniface IX
; the letter of appointment survives, and indicates that he was a married layman as well as a singer in the papal chapel.
He stayed at this post through the papacies of Boniface IX
(to 1404), Innocent VII (1404–1406), and Gregory XII (1406-1415). This was during the turbulent period of the Western Schism
, and from his surviving letters, as well as the numerous hidden, and probably subversive political references in his music, Zacara seems to have been involved in the machinations of the time. It is not known exactly when he abandoned service to Pope Gregory, but if the ballata Dime Fortuna poy che tu parlasti is indeed by Zacara then we can read in its text evidence that he left Gregory before the council of Pisa in 1409. He is recorded as a singer in the chapel of John XXIII
in Bologna
in 1412 and 1413. Two documents of 1416 (one or them dated 17 and 20 September) describe him as being already dead; he owned substantial property in Teramo as well as a house in Rome at the time of his death.
The illuminated Squarcialupi Codex
contains an illustration of him. He was a small man, and had a total of only ten digits altogether on both hands and feet, details which are not only evident in the portrait but mentioned in his entry in an 18th century Abruzzi necrology.
, similar in style to the work of Jacopo da Bologna
or Francesco Landini
; and a period possibly beginning around 1400, when he was in Rome, during which his music is influenced by the ars subtilior
.
Both sacred and secular vocal music survive by Zacara, and in greater quantity than most other composers from the period around 1400. Numerous paired mass movements, Glorias and Credos, are in a Bologna
manuscript (Q15), compiled beginning around 1420; seven songs appear in the Squarcialupi Codex
(probably compiled 1410–1415) and 12 in the Mancini Codex (probably compiled around 1410). Three songs are found in other sources, including the ars subtilior, Latin-texted Sumite, karissimi, capud de Remulo, patres.
Apart from one caccia (Cacciando un giorno), a Latin ballade (Sumite, karissimi), and a madrigal (Plorans ploravi), his secular songs are all ballate
(Fallows 2001). A recent study proposes attribution to Zacara of a French-texted two-voice composition, Le temps verrà, found in the manuscript T.III.2, in part on stylistic grounds, and in part on the basis of the politically charged, satirical subject matter of the text.
The songs in the Squarcialupi Codex and Mancini Codex differ greatly in style. Those in the former document were probably written early in Zacara's career, and show influence from lyrical mid-century Italian composers such as Landini; the music in the Mancini Codex is more closely related to the mannerist style of the ars subtilior. While exact dates on the music have not been established, it is possible that some of the music in the Mancini Codex was written after Zacara left Rome, and was more likely to be influenced by the Avignon-based avant-garde ars subtilior style; on the other hand he may have been consciously trying to create a Roman response to the music coming from the court of the schismatic antipopes.
One of the strangest of Zacara's songs, occurring in the Mancini Codex, is Deus deorum, Pluto, a two-voice invocation to the Roman god of the underworld; the text is filled with the names of the inhabitants of the infernal regions. It is "an enthusiastic prayer to Pluto, king of the demons"— not the kind of composition one would normally expect from a pious Vatican secretary. Zacara even used this song as a basis for one of his settings of the Credo of the mass
.
Zacara's mass movements appears to have been influential on other composers of the early 15th century, including Johannes Ciconia
and Bartolomeo da Bologna
; some of his innovations can even be seen in Dufay
. Zacara may have been the first to use 'divisi' passages in the upper voices. His movements are much longer than other 14th century mass movements, and use imitation extensively, as well as hocket (a more archaic technique). In general, his paired movements — Gloria, Credo — are a link between the scattered, ununified movements of the 14th century (Machaut's
Messe de Nostre Dame
being the significant exception) and the cyclic mass
which developed in the 15th century.
Some of Zacara's pieces are found in very distant sources, indicating his fame and wide distribution, including in a Polish manuscript and in the English Old Hall Manuscript
(no. 33, a setting of the Gloria).
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
composer, singer, and papal
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
secretary of the late Trecento
Music of the trecento
The Trecento was a period of vigorous activity in Italy in the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and music. The music of the Trecento paralleled the achievements in the other arts in many ways, for example, in pioneering new forms of expression, especially in secular song in the...
and early 15th century. He was one of the most active Italian composers around 1400, and his style bridged the periods of the Trecento, ars subtilior
Ars subtilior
Ars subtilior is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered around Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory...
, and beginnings of the musical Renaissance
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
.
Life
Zacara de Teramo was probably from TeramoTeramo
Teramo is a city and comune in the central Italian region of Abruzzo, the capital of the province of Teramo.The city, from Rome, is situated between the highest mountains of the Apennines and the Adriatic coast...
, in northern Abruzzo
Abruzzo
Abruzzo is a region in Italy, its western border lying less than due east of Rome. Abruzzo borders the region of Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east, and the Adriatic Sea to the east...
(Kingdom of Naples
Kingdom of Naples
The Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of...
), not far from the Adriatic coast.
Nothing is known about his life until he is recorded in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, in 1390, as a teacher at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia
Santo Spirito in Sassia
Santo Spirito in Sassia is a 12th century basilica church in Rome.It has been erected in Borgo Santo Spirito, a street which got its name from the church, placed in the southern part of Rione Borgo....
; the document mentions that he was not young at the time of this appointment, but his exact age is not given. In the next year he became a secretary to Pope Boniface IX
Pope Boniface IX
Pope Boniface IX , born Piero Tomacelli, was the second Roman Pope of the Western Schism from November 2, 1389, until October 1, 1404...
; the letter of appointment survives, and indicates that he was a married layman as well as a singer in the papal chapel.
He stayed at this post through the papacies of Boniface IX
Pope Boniface IX
Pope Boniface IX , born Piero Tomacelli, was the second Roman Pope of the Western Schism from November 2, 1389, until October 1, 1404...
(to 1404), Innocent VII (1404–1406), and Gregory XII (1406-1415). This was during the turbulent period of the Western Schism
Western Schism
The Western Schism or Papal Schism was a split within the Catholic Church from 1378 to 1417. Two men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope. Driven by politics rather than any theological disagreement, the schism was ended by the Council of Constance . The simultaneous claims to the papal chair...
, and from his surviving letters, as well as the numerous hidden, and probably subversive political references in his music, Zacara seems to have been involved in the machinations of the time. It is not known exactly when he abandoned service to Pope Gregory, but if the ballata Dime Fortuna poy che tu parlasti is indeed by Zacara then we can read in its text evidence that he left Gregory before the council of Pisa in 1409. He is recorded as a singer in the chapel of John XXIII
Antipope John XXIII
Baldassarre Cossa was Pope John XXIII during the Western Schism. The Catholic Church regards him as an antipope.-Biography:...
in Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
in 1412 and 1413. Two documents of 1416 (one or them dated 17 and 20 September) describe him as being already dead; he owned substantial property in Teramo as well as a house in Rome at the time of his death.
The illuminated Squarcialupi Codex
Squarcialupi Codex
The Squarcialupi Codex is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence, Italy in the early 15th century...
contains an illustration of him. He was a small man, and had a total of only ten digits altogether on both hands and feet, details which are not only evident in the portrait but mentioned in his entry in an 18th century Abruzzi necrology.
Music
Studies on Zacara's music are all relatively recent, and much remains to be solved in terms of chronology and attribution. He seems to have been active as a composer throughout his life, and a stylistic development is evident, with two general phases taking shape: an early period, dominated by song forms such as the ballataBallata
The ballata is an Italian poetic and musical form, which was in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical structure AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical 'forme fixe' virelai...
, similar in style to the work of Jacopo da Bologna
Jacopo da Bologna
Jacopo da Bologna was an Italian composer of the Trecento, the period sometimes known as the Italian ars nova. He was one of the first composers of this group, making him a contemporary of Gherardello da Firenze and Giovanni da Firenze...
or Francesco Landini
Francesco Landini
Francesco degli Organi, Francesco il Cieco, or Francesco da Firenze, called by later generations Francesco Landini or Landino was an Italian composer, organist, singer, poet and instrument maker...
; and a period possibly beginning around 1400, when he was in Rome, during which his music is influenced by the ars subtilior
Ars subtilior
Ars subtilior is a musical style characterized by rhythmic and notational complexity, centered around Paris, Avignon in southern France, also in northern Spain at the end of the fourteenth century. The style also is found in the French Cypriot repertory...
.
Both sacred and secular vocal music survive by Zacara, and in greater quantity than most other composers from the period around 1400. Numerous paired mass movements, Glorias and Credos, are in a Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
manuscript (Q15), compiled beginning around 1420; seven songs appear in the Squarcialupi Codex
Squarcialupi Codex
The Squarcialupi Codex is an illuminated manuscript compiled in Florence, Italy in the early 15th century...
(probably compiled 1410–1415) and 12 in the Mancini Codex (probably compiled around 1410). Three songs are found in other sources, including the ars subtilior, Latin-texted Sumite, karissimi, capud de Remulo, patres.
Apart from one caccia (Cacciando un giorno), a Latin ballade (Sumite, karissimi), and a madrigal (Plorans ploravi), his secular songs are all ballate
Ballata
The ballata is an Italian poetic and musical form, which was in use from the late 13th to the 15th century. It has the musical structure AbbaA, with the first and last stanzas having the same texts. It is thus most similar to the French musical 'forme fixe' virelai...
(Fallows 2001). A recent study proposes attribution to Zacara of a French-texted two-voice composition, Le temps verrà, found in the manuscript T.III.2, in part on stylistic grounds, and in part on the basis of the politically charged, satirical subject matter of the text.
The songs in the Squarcialupi Codex and Mancini Codex differ greatly in style. Those in the former document were probably written early in Zacara's career, and show influence from lyrical mid-century Italian composers such as Landini; the music in the Mancini Codex is more closely related to the mannerist style of the ars subtilior. While exact dates on the music have not been established, it is possible that some of the music in the Mancini Codex was written after Zacara left Rome, and was more likely to be influenced by the Avignon-based avant-garde ars subtilior style; on the other hand he may have been consciously trying to create a Roman response to the music coming from the court of the schismatic antipopes.
One of the strangest of Zacara's songs, occurring in the Mancini Codex, is Deus deorum, Pluto, a two-voice invocation to the Roman god of the underworld; the text is filled with the names of the inhabitants of the infernal regions. It is "an enthusiastic prayer to Pluto, king of the demons"— not the kind of composition one would normally expect from a pious Vatican secretary. Zacara even used this song as a basis for one of his settings of the Credo of the mass
Mass (music)
The Mass, a form of sacred musical composition, is a choral composition that sets the invariable portions of the Eucharistic liturgy to music...
.
Zacara's mass movements appears to have been influential on other composers of the early 15th century, including Johannes Ciconia
Johannes Ciconia
Johannes Ciconia was a late medieval composer and music theorist who worked most of his adult life in Italy, particularly in the service of the Papal Chapels and at the cathedral of Padua....
and Bartolomeo da Bologna
Bartolomeo da Bologna
Bartolomeo da Bologna was a north Italian composer of the early Quattrocento, the transitional period between the late medieval style of the Trecento and the early Renaissance.- Life :...
; some of his innovations can even be seen in Dufay
Guillaume Dufay
Guillaume Dufay was a Franco-Flemish composer of the early Renaissance. As the central figure in the Burgundian School, he was the most famous and influential composer in Europe in the mid-15th century.-Early life:From the evidence of his will, he was probably born in Beersel, in the vicinity of...
. Zacara may have been the first to use 'divisi' passages in the upper voices. His movements are much longer than other 14th century mass movements, and use imitation extensively, as well as hocket (a more archaic technique). In general, his paired movements — Gloria, Credo — are a link between the scattered, ununified movements of the 14th century (Machaut's
Guillaume de Machaut
Guillaume de Machaut was a Medieval French poet and composer. He is one of the earliest composers on whom significant biographical information is available....
Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame
Messe de Nostre Dame is a polyphonic mass composed before 1365 by the French poet, composer and cleric Guillaume de Machaut...
being the significant exception) and the cyclic mass
Cyclic mass
In Renaissance music, the cyclic mass was a setting of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass, in which each of the movements – Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei – shared a common musical theme, commonly a cantus firmus, thus making it a unified whole...
which developed in the 15th century.
Some of Zacara's pieces are found in very distant sources, indicating his fame and wide distribution, including in a Polish manuscript and in the English Old Hall Manuscript
Old Hall Manuscript
The Old Hall Manuscript is the largest, most complete, and most significant source of English sacred music of the late 14th and early 15th centuries, and as such represents the best source for late Medieval English music. The manuscript somehow survived the Reformation, and until 1873 belonged to St...
(no. 33, a setting of the Gloria).