Zacara Da Teramo - Life

Life

Antonio was probably from Teramo, in northern Abruzzo (Kingdom of Naples), not far from the Adriatic coast. The possibility that we were conflating two different composers, "Antonio da Teramo" and "Zacara da Teramo", into one person were removed by research into the composer's life by Agostino Ziino. (Another composer with a similar name, Nicolaus Zacharie, was of the following generation of composers). Antonio's nickname "Zaccara" (or "Zachara"; often regularized in modern editions as "Zacara") probably is a reference to his short stature (he is described as "fuit statura corporis parva" in a 15th-century biography). The name Zacara means a small thing of a thing of little value; hence the reason why Antonio never used the nickname himself and documents produced in circles close to the composer are careful to call him some variation on "Antonius vulgatus dictus Zachara" (Anthony, commonly called Zacara).

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.