Zabaleta, Nicanor Zaballos, Rodrigo
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Zabaleta, Nicanor (b San Sebastian, 7 Jan 1907; d San Juan, Puerto Rico, 31 March 1993). Basque harpist. He was the most important harpist of the 20th century, and no one player did more to promote the harp as a solo instrument. After studying in Spain with Vincenta Tormo de Calvo and Luisa Menarguez he studied privately with Marcel Tournier in Paris, where he made his European début in 1926. Thus began a solo career which spanned 66 years, during which he gave some 3000 concerts and played with some 300 different orchestras. He made his New York début on 5 July 1934, and gave his final concert in Madrid on 16 June 1992. He consistently presented a large and wide-ranging repertory, and the solo works he introduced have become an accepted part of the modern harp repertory. His playing was characterized by an impeccable clarity and brilliance of sonority, technical poise, flawless control, economy of movement and a meticulous damping technique, further enhanced by a mechanical damping device, operated by an 8th pedal which he had fixed to his harps (Obermayer-Horngacher). Although his technique was ideally suited to his preferred 18th-century and neo-classical repertory, he was an enthusiastic advocate of the music of the arch-Romantic English harpist-composer Elias Parish Alvars (1808–49), two of whose concertos he recorded. As far as possible he programmed only original works, and this led to his researches into earlier music and his many commissions to contemporary composers. Zabaleta was the dedicatee of some 25 concertos, and, apart from these, he also gave first performances of the concertos of Ginastera and Montsalvatge, and a concerto for harp and electronics by Josef Tal. It was at his request that Joaquín Rodrigo arranged the Concierto de Aranjuez for the harp. Zabaleta recorded much of his large repertory, his recordings winning major prizes in France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. In 1982 he was awarded Spain's National Music Prize, and in 1988 he was elected to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Still performing and giving masterclasses at the age of 84, he was president of honour at the first World Harp Festival held at Cardiff in June 1991. WRITINGS El arpa en España de los siglos XVI al XVIII: antecedentes historicos (Madrid, 1988) BIBLIOGRAPHY J. Weidensaul: ‘Nicanor Zabaleta’, American Harp Journal, vii/4 (1980), 3– 7 Obituary, The Times (7 April 1993) W.M. Govea: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Harpists: a Bio-critical Sourcebook (Westport, CT, 1995), 309–18 ANN GRIFFITHS Zaballos, Rodrigo de. See Ceballos, Rodrigo de. Zabel, Albert Heinrich (b Berlin, 22 Feb 1834; d St Petersburg, 16 Feb 1910). Russian harpist and composer of German birth. Through a scholarship obtained for him by Meyerbeer, he completed his education at the Berlin Institut für die Ausbildung von Organisten und Musiklehren, where he studied the harp under Ludwig Grimm. From 1845 to 1849 he played with Josef Gung’l's band in Germany, Russia, England and the USA. Returning to Europe, he was solo harpist with the Berlin Opera until 1851, and in 1855 he moved to St Petersburg to become solo harpist with the Imperial Ballet, a post which he retained for life. When Anton Rubinstein founded the St Petersburg Conservatory in 1862, Zabel was engaged as harp teacher; he was subsequently named professor in 1879 and honorary distinguished professor in 1904. Among his pupils were his daughter I. Zabel-Raschat, K. Walter-Kühne, D. Andrev, N. Amosov, I. Polomarenko and I. Pomansanski. He published a pamphlet Ein Wort an die Herren Komponisten über die praktische Verwendung der Harfe im Orchester (Leipzig, 1894), a Grosse Methode (Leipzig, 1900), a Harp Concerto in C minor op.35 (Leipzig, 1904–5) and about 40 solos and transcriptions whose brilliance assured their success. BIBLIOGRAPHY PazdírekH M.G. Scimeca: L'arpa nella storia (Bari, 1938), 174–5 A.N. Schirinzi: L'arpa: storia di un antico strumento (Milan, 1961), 148–9 ALICE LAWSON ABER-COUNT Zabern, Conrad von. See Conrad von Zabern. Zacara da Teramo, Antonio [Antonius Berardi Andree de Teramo; Zacar, Zacara, Zaccara, Zacharie] (b ?Teramo, c1350–60; d after 19 May 1413). Italian composer, singer and scribe. The publication in 1983 of a document of 1390 confirmed him (rather than Nicolaus Zacharie, or somebody else entirely) as composer of the songs headed ‘M Çacherias Chantor Domini nostri pape’ in the Squarcialupi Codex (I-Fl Pal.87), and the composer's portrait in the manuscript absolutely confirms the identity (see below). Now Zacharie can be credited with only three pieces and the rest is by Zacara da Teramo, who thereby emerges as one of the most prolific, resourceful and widely copied composers of the time. 1. Life. 2. Music. Z.doc - S30916 WORKS BIBLIOGRAPHY DAVID FALLOWS Zacara da Teramo, Antonio 1. Life. A contract of 5 January 1390 refers to ‘magistro Antonio Berardi Andree de Teramo alias dicto vulgariter Zacchara’, requiring him to teach music to the residents of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome, and to produce an illuminated antiphoner for the adjoining church (Esposito, 1983, 1992); the words ‘optimo perito et famoso camtore, scriptore et miniatore’ further imply that he was not particularly young, therefore perhaps born as early as 1360. Documents at Teramo name a notary, Giacomo di Antonio da Teramo, and a judge, Ursolino di Antonio da Teramo, in the years 1402 to 1434: if they were sons of Zacara, he would need to have been born as early as about 1350; but Antonio is too common a name for confidence. A. Tulli's Catalogo di uomini illustri (Teramo, 1766) reports that a now lost Abruzzi necrology described ‘Zaccarias Teramnensis’ as an exceptionally successful composer and elegant scribe who was small in stature (apparently the reason for the sobriquet Zacara), with only ten digits on his hands and feet combined – details confirmed by the portrait of him in the Squarcialupi Codex (Nádas, 1986). On 1 February 1391 a papal letter to ‘magistro Antonio dicto Zacharie de Teramo’, describing him as a married layman of the diocese of Abruzzo and as a singer in the papal chapel, appointed him a papal secretary (Ziino, 1979). Surprisingly few papal letters were written by him (Ziino, 1979, lists only 30, all signed ‘A. da Teramo’; all are copies, but an autograph letter survives in GB-Lpro SC7/41/7, noted in Di Bacco and Nádas, 1998, p.57). They suggest that he stayed in Rome until 1 June 1407, working for Boniface IX (1389–1404), Innocent VII (1404–06) and Gregory XII (1406– 15), evidently following Gregory XII north in 1407. The only two surviving payment lists of papal singers from these years, in February and perhaps March 1400, record him as ‘Zacchara’ and ‘Zacharias’ (Sherr). He may well be the ‘Antonio da Teramo’ who witnessed the doctorate of Simone de Lellis de Teramo in Padua on 8 December 1410 (Nádas, 1986, p.178). But he was in the chapel of the antipope John XXIII (‘Magistro Antonio dicto zachara’) at Bologna from 1412 to 20 May 1413 (Nádas, 1986); perhaps he, like many others, had abandoned the Roman obedience and Pope Gregory in 1408, a change possibly witnessed in the ballata Dime, Fortuna (attributed in Ziino, 1994). In the will of his nephew and executor Lellus Blaxii Petri, dated 1416, he is described as deceased (‘quondam Magistri Anthonii Berardi Andree dicti alias Zaccharii dudum cantoris et scriptoris Romane Curie et Sedis apostolice ac avunculi dicti Lelli’) and as owner of substantial property in Teramo; another document, dated 17 and 20 September 1416, concerning his house in Rome, describes him as deceased (both cited in Di Bacco and Nádas, 1998, p.58). As late as 1463, the canons of Teramo described ‘Zacharum musicum’ to their new bishop, remarking that ‘eius inventa pro oraculis habentur’ – his compositions are considered oracles (Pirrotta, 1971). Zacara da Teramo, Antonio 2. Music. (i) Evaluation and sources. The evaluation of Zacara changed substantially in the 1980s as a result of several factors: the recognition that a single man composed this entire body of music; the discovery of new sources and works, additionally showing that his music was exceptionally widely distributed; the evidence that he may have been born as early as 1360; and the belief that Ciconia was born in about 1370 rather than, as previously thought, in the 1330s. On this last matter, it now seems easy to conclude, for example, that Zacara's Gloria ‘Micinella’ and Credo ‘Cursor’ actually influenced one of Ciconia's Gloria-Credo pairs (PMFC, xxiv, 1985, nos.3–4); as early as 1960 Layton (who was the first to recognize correctly the full extent of Zacara's output) noted the more consequential tonal structure of Ciconia's work, though he implied that Ciconia was the pioneer here. Similarly, it now seems almost certain that the ‘parody’ Gloria and Credo of Bartolomeo da Bologna were also influenced by Zacara. Fischer (1987; supported in Di Bacco and Nádas, 1998) also suggested that Zacara was the initiator of contrasting ‘divisi’ passages for the upper voice in mass movements, a trend continued by Ciconia and Du Fay, among others. Sadly, Zacara's theoretical treatise is extremely brief and merely enumerates the concordant pitches above each note of the hexachord. Several works were copied widely: two of his mass movements are known from six manuscripts, two more from five, among them manuscripts from Poland and even in one exceptional case the otherwise resolutely English Old Hall Manuscript. Many newly discovered manuscripts and fragments contain Zacara's work, particularly the important I-Fsl 2211 and I-Tn T.III.2.