Zacara da Teramo

In this recording entitled Enigma Fortuna, the ensemble La Fonte Musica, directed by Michele Pasotti, aims to shed light on the mysterious and eccentric personality of Antonio Zacara da Teramo (1355-1416). A contemporary of Boccaccio, Donatello and Brunelleschi, this composer from the Abruzzi region could almost be likened to a sort of musical Hieronymus Bosch, for the texts he set to music conjure up a ‘topsy-turvy universe’ where the obscene, the imaginary and the grotesque go hand in hand. In his ballata Amor ne tossa he writes ‘Let him understand me who can, for I understand myself’, foreshadowing the proud egotism of the Romantic artists who were to come 400 years after him. With this four-CD set presenting the world premiere of Zacara’s complete works, La Fonte Musica offers us an initial approach to understanding his music. And thereby, through the timeless character of art, to understanding a so-called ‘renascent’ era that seems as ‘topsy-turvy’ as our own.

In this recording entitled Enigma Fortuna, the ensemble La Fonte Musica, directed by Michele Pasotti, aims to shed light on the mysterious and eccentric personality of Antonio Zacara da Teramo (1355-1416). A contemporary of Boccaccio, Donatello and Brunelleschi, this composer from the Abruzzi region could almost be likened to a sort of musical Hieronymus Bosch, for the texts he set to music conjure up a ‘topsy-turvy universe’ where the obscene, the imaginary and the grotesque go hand in hand. In his ballata Amor ne tossa he writes ‘Let him understand me who can, for I understand myself’, foreshadowing the proud egotism of the Romantic artists who were to come 400 years after him. With this four-CD set presenting the world premiere of Zacara’s complete works, La Fonte Musica offers us an initial approach to understanding his music. And thereby, through the timeless character of art, to understanding a so-called ‘renascent’ era that seems as ‘topsy-turvy’ as our own.

If you love medieval vocal music, you'll be fascinated by this unusual collection of mass movements written by two Italian composers– Matteo and Zaccara–that are juxtaposed and organized both to contrast their styles and to make programmatic sense. There's lots of fancy ornamentation and there are many dramatic moments, as well as sections of sweet, gentle lyricism–listen to Matteo's "Gloria," sung with heart- rending tenderness by soprano Jill Feldman. The singers are alternately accompanied by recorder, harp, fiddle, bells, and organ.

The critically-acclaimed ensemble Mala Punica came into the limelight by the mid-Nineties with three illustrious, multi-award winning discs on Arcana, which revolutionized the world of medieval music: Ars subtilis Ytaliaca, D’Amor ragionando and En attendant. As implied by the title of the album, D’Amor ragionando (Discoursing on Love) is a collection of songs about love from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy and is centered around Francesco Landini, one of the foremost figures in medieval music. Members include Jill Feldman, Kees Boeke and Giuseppe Maletto, some of the most respected names in the early music repertoire.

Polyphonic 14th-century Italian secular music seems to emerge out of nowhere in the history of music. Nevertheless, this tradition – which often goes by the name Ars Nova – fits seamlessly into the history of Italian culture. Our knowledge of it has been pieced together from relatively few sources, which nevertheless reveal three distinct phases. In its first phase, Italian Ars Nova spread out from universities, including those of Padua and Bologna, which had strong links with the dominant and contemporaneous French Ars Nova. In the second phase, the centre of 14th-century Italian polyphony seems to shift markedly to Florence. The final phase, which bridged the late 1300s and early 1400s, shows the influence of intense cultural exchange brought about by an international circulation of musicians and poets caused by the political instability of the papacy’s return from Avignon to Rome and the consequent heightened mobility among the various courts and their entourages.