(…) Most of what we know about Sancho comes from an entry in Domingo Prat's famous Diccionario of 1934. According to Prat, Sancho was born in the province of Valencia, Spain, and was a member of the “Estudiantina Figaro”, who first visited America in 1879. These were the “original Spanish Students” about whom I wrote at length in the fall 1991 Soundboard as being the impetus for the great mandolin craze that swept the country in the final decades of the 19th century. In that article dealing with the American fretted-instrument magazine The Cadenza, I quote Samuel Adelstein, a San Francisco-based mandolin player, who together with the a forementioned Romero “established the first mandolin orchestra on the Pacific Coast”, about the “Estudiantina Figaro”. Writing in 1900, Adelstein states that this group was in California in 1882 and disbanded in Buenos Aires in 1885.
Sancho apparently lived a peripatetic life. He was back in Buenos Aires in 1904, which accounts for the appearance of his opus 11 there, and returned to the United States the following year. Along the way, Sancho managed to find publishers for his music. Some of it appeared in San Francisco as early as 1889. Jean White published him in Boston. His works also appeared in Paris and Milan.
Our examples come from an entire series issued by the New York publisher Hugo V. Schlam. All carry a 1900 copyright date. (…)
(Peter Danner, GFA Soundboard Summer 1997)