Zacara da Teramo

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).

[5] 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.

[6] 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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.