Pergolesi studied
music at
Iesi under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to
Naples in 1725, where he studied under
Gaetano Greco and
Francesco Feo among others. He spent most of his brief life working for aristocratic patrons like the principe di Stigliano and the duca di Maddaloni.
Pergolesi was one of the most important early composers of
opera buffa (comic opera). His
opera seria Il prigioner superbo contained the two act
buffa intermezzo, La Serva Padrona (
The Servant Mistress,
28 August 1733), which became a very popular work in its own right. When it was performed in
Paris in 1752, it prompted the so-called
Querelle des Bouffons ("quarrel of the comedians") between supporters of serious French opera by the likes of
Jean-Baptiste Lully and
Jean-Philippe Rameau and supporters of new Italian comic opera. Pergolesi was held up as a model of the Italian style during this quarrel, which divided Paris's musical community for two years.
Among Pergolesi's other operatic works are his first opera
La conversione e morte di San Guglielmo (
1731), Lo frate 'nnammorato (
The friar in love,
1732, to a Neapolitan text),
L'Olimpiade (
31 January 1735) and
Il Flaminio (1735). All his operas were premiered in Naples apart from
L'Olimpiade which was first given in
Rome.
Pergolesi also wrote sacred music, including a
Mass in F. It is his
Stabat Mater (
1736), however, for male
soprano, male
alto and
orchestra, which is his best known sacred work. It was commissioned by the Confraternità dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo (the monks of the brotherhood of
San Luigi di Palazzo) as a replacement for the rather old-fashioned one by
Alessandro Scarlatti for identical forces which had been performed each
Good Friday in
Naples. Whilst classical in scope, the opening section of the setting demonstrates Pergolesi's mastery of the Italian baroque 'durezze e ligature' style, characterized by numerous suspensions over a faster, conjunct bassline. The work remained popular, becoming the most frequently printed work of the
18th century, and being arranged by a number of other composers, including
Johann Sebastian Bach, who used it as the basis for his
psalm Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden,
BWV 1083.
Pergolesi wrote a number of secular instrumental works, including a
violin sonata and a
violin concerto. A considerable number of instrumental and sacred works once attributed to Pergolesi have since been shown to be falsely attributed. Much of
Igor Stravinsky's ballet, Pulcinella, which ostensibly reworks pieces by Pergolesi, is actually based on spurious works. The Concerti Armonici are now known to be composed by
Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer. Many colorful anecdotes related by his early biographer Florimo, were later revealed as fabrication, though they furnished material for two nineteenth-century operas broadly based on Pergolesi's career.
Pergolesi died at the age of twenty-six in
Pozzuoli from
tuberculosis.
rss feed