PERGOLESI, Giovanni Battista. — Musician, b. 4 Jan. 1710 at Jesi, d. at Pozzuoli 16 or 17 Mar. 1736. After receiving his first musical instruction in his native city, in 1726, with the help of the Marchese Pianetti, he studied at the Conservatory of the Poveri di Gesù Cristo in Naples.
Among his earliest works are the oratorio *La morte di s. Giuseppe* and the first *Salve Regina* in C minor for soprano, with quartet and harpsichord accompaniment (1730), followed by the oratorio *La conversione di s. Guglielmo di Aquitania*, performed in the summer of 1731 in the cloister of S. Agnello Maggiore in Naples, in which Pergolesi’s personality already finds a fully characteristic expressive power in the delineation of character and the dramatic truth of the individual parts. From 1731, with *La Sostituita*, he began that glorious theatrical activity which culminated in *La serva padrona* (1733), a gem of opera buffa. On 20 May 1734 he had performed in Rome (S. Lorenzo in Lucina) a Mass for the feast of St John Nepomucene. In Naples he completed and directed several other operas, then returned to Rome, where the failure of *L’Olimpiade* (his masterpiece among serious operas, 1735) grieved him deeply. Returning to Naples, he was appointed organist of the royal chapel, but the illness already undermined him; he still directed the performance of *Il Flaminio* (1735) and retired to the Franciscans at Pozzuoli, where he wrote the famous *Stabat* and died in poverty and solitude.
Some have wished to see in Pergolesi’s church music, especially in his motets, a cold, slovenly and hybrid mannerism, but Fellerer (*Der Palestrinastil und seine Bedeutung in der vokalen Kirchenmusik des 18. Jahrhunderts*, Augsburg 1929) sheds with scholarly insight the light of research on Pergolesi’s compositional technique, which places him in a singular position in the history of Palestrina’s imitation. His sacred output, together with his chamber and instrumental music, does not yield a lesser Pergolesi, but one who, though an expert contrapuntist, knew how to escape the conventions and stylistic habits of his time in order to attain the grand sonorities and the Palestrinian throb of intimate and fervent piety.
Among his numerous sacred works after the oratorios (a third, *Per la nascita del Redentore*, is now lost), the *Masses*, the *Salve Regina*s, and the *Stabat* stand out. Of the four *Masses* in D major: for voices with instruments and organ; in D major for 10 voices and 2 choirs with instruments and organ; in F major for 5 voices with instruments; and in F major for 10 voices and 2 choirs with accompaniment of 2 orchestras and organ, the one that most pleased for the pathetic grace of its melody and the magnificent grandeur of its lines, and which was repeated for years on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, is the *Mass* in F major, perhaps composed in Rome in 1734. Of the four *Salve Regina*s, that in F minor reaches a sublimity of art truly remarkable, and Della Corte (v. BIBLICA) places it, with the *Stabat*, beside Bach’s cantatas and *Geistliche Lieder* for the tender sweetness of accents that flow from the soul invoking the Saviour. To complete the picture of Pergolesi’s vast output one may cite psalms, *Magnificat*s, antiphons, responsories, motets, cantatas, chamber arias, sonatas, symphonies, concertos, as well as didactic works such as the *Solfeggi* for 2 and 3 voices, preserved in autograph at the Naples Conservatory, and the *Solfeggio* with piano accompaniment, exercises for harpsichord, etc.