Zacara da Teramo

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Antonio Zacara da Teramo , also Zacar, Zacara, Zaccara, Zacharie, Zachara (1350/1360 – between May 19, 1413 and 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 right around 1400, and his style bridged the periods of the trecento, ars subtilior, and beginnings of the musical Renaissance.

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[edit] Life

He was probably from Teramo, in northern Abruzzo province, 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. Some of the references in his music have even been called "Satanic" ([1]). It was in 1408 that he probably abandoned his service to Pope Gregory; the ballade Dime Fortuna poy che tu parlasti has been cited as evidence of this move; and he is recorded as a singer in the chapel of Antipope John XXIII in Bologna in 1412 and 1413. Two documents of 1416 describe him as being already dead; he owned property both in Rome and Teramo 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.

[edit] 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 ballata, 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 bizarre Sumite, karissimi, capud de Remulo, patres, which has been called the most rhythmically complex composition of the entire ars subtilior[1] All but one of his secular songs are ballate.

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"[2]— 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: some of these sources include manuscripts in Poland, and one composition even appears in the Old Hall Manuscript in England (no. 33, a setting of the Gloria).

[edit] See also

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ HOASM brief biography of Zacara
  2. ^ Fallows, "Zacara da Teramo", Grove Music Online, op. cit.
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