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Artist
Antonio Zacchara da Teramo
12+ albums
early musicmedieval musictrecentoars novaItalian Medieval Music
about
Antonio "Zacara" da Teramo (in Latin Antonius Berardi Andree de Teramo, also Zacar, Zaccara, Zacharie, Zachara, and Çacharius; 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. 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 was 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
