A new catalogue on the flaminioonline website: Giovanni Sgambati
http://www.flaminioonline.it/Biografie/Sgambati-catalogo.html
Why Giovanni Sgambati?
As you know, I am from Rome, and Giovanni Sgambati, who was born in Rome and lived there his whole life (he lived in Piazza di Spagna), was the driving force of musical culture in our city during the years spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. Founder of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory and, from 1893, artistic director of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana. A great friend of Liszt, who used his house to give music lessons during his Roman years, and of Wagner, who introduced him to the publisher Schott in Mainz. Schott would later become the almost exclusive publisher of all Sgambati's compositions.
Another attraction was that there is no catalogue for Sgambati, but his entire archive is deposited largely in the Casanatense library and a smaller portion in the library of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory. This allowed me to spend over a month playing library mouse among card catalogs and manuscripts.
I had a lot of fun!
