Zacara da Teramo
Italian composer active around 1400
Antonio "Zacara" da Teramo (in Latin Antonius Berardi Andree de Teramo, also Zacar, Zaccara, Zacharie, Zachara, and Çacharius; c.1350/1360 – 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.
Life
Antonio was probably from Teramo, in northern Abruzzo (Kingdom of Naples), not far from the Adriatic coast. In musical sources he is sometimes called "Antonio da Teramo" and otherwise "Zacara da Teramo" (or something similar) leading many musicologists to suggest there were two composers of similar names. The possibility that two people were being conflated was removed in 1979 by research into the composer's life by Agostino Ziino. (Another composer with a similar name, Nicolaus Zacharie, is considered to be a different person from 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 having "statura corporis parva" in a 15th-century biography). The name Zacara means a small thing or 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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Zacara da Teramo” is italian composer active around 1400. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Zacara, Teramo and Italian, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1093593. VIAF identifies the subject as 45177503. The Library of Congress control number is n93096008. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1350, 1360, 1413 and 1416.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zacara da Teramo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.