Giovanni Maria Sabino studied music under Prospero Testa after moving to Naples at the age of fourteen, receiving his foundational musical training from him. Contemporary accounts state that Sabino’s formal musical education began under Testa, who was active in Naples around 1601 and was regarded as one of the city’s distinguished composers and organists.
Prospero Testa is also recorded as considering Giovanni Maria Sabino among his most outstanding pupils, indicating the significance of their teacher–student relationship within the Neapolitan musical environment of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.