Antonio "Zacara" da Teramo

"[...]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.^[2]

He stayed at this post through the papacies of Boniface IX (to 1404), Innocent VII (1404–1406), and Gregory XII (1406-1415).^[2] 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.^[7] He is recorded as a singer in the chapel of John XXIII in Bologna in 1412 and 1413. [...] 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 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.^["

(Antonio "Zacara" da Teramo )