Gaetano Sborgi: Sei Sonate Da Cembalo Op. 1 – Jacopo Sibilia

We do not know precisely the date of birth and death of Gaetano Sborgi, a composer who lived between the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. We can say with reasonable certainty that Sborgi was born in Florence, as in the frontispiece of his sonatas he states that he is Florentine.

Sborgi was chapel master and piano-forte teacher at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. He studied with his brother (or father according to Picchianti) Gasparo and then moved to Naples in the Conservatory of S. Onofrio, where he had Marco Santucci as a companion and where he stayed for seventeen years. Back in Florence “he made himself known. … with several of his theatrical pieces of real good taste, and in others of different kinds. He had three works of piano sonatas printed, which show his genius and talent”. Six harpsichord sonatas dedicated to Lorenzo Niccolini, ciamberlano of Peter Leopold i and Ferdinand iii, can be included in the context of those compositions that show the gradual transition from the traditional harpsichord with plucked strings to the new conception, piano et forte, with struck strings.

Jacopo Sibilia uses a copy of a 1783 Stein fortepiano, which can be played with two different types of action, in order to make the performance more expressive and harmonious.