1710–1736 · Classical
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist who lived from 1710 to 1736. He belonged to the Neapolitan school and was one of the first important composers of opera buffa. His works include La serva padrona and the cantata Stabat Mater, the most frequently printed piece of music of the 18th century.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was born on 4 January 1710 in the town of Jesi. Today it lies in the Province of Ancona, but at that time the area belonged to the Papal States. The composer's real surname was Draghi. The nickname Pergolesi comes from the nearby town of Pergola, where his ancestors lived, and in time it stuck to him as a pseudonym.
He began studying music in his native Jesi under a local musician. In 1725 Pergolesi moved to Naples.
In Naples Pergolesi studied the foundations of composition with Gaetano Greco and other teachers. He left the conservatory in 1731 and won some renown: his two-part oratorio on the death of Saint Joseph, The Phoenix on the Pyre, and his three-act sacred drama about Saint William, Duke of Aquitaine, were performed.
Most of Pergolesi's brief career was spent in the service of noble patrons, including the Prince of Stigliano, Ferdinando Colonna, and the Duke of Maddaloni, Domenico Marzio Carafa. He was not only a composer but also a violinist and an organist.
His first opera seria was La Salustia, staged in January 1732 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples. In the same year, on 27 September, the opera Lo frate 'nnamorato had its premiere at the Teatro dei Fiorentini in Naples; its text is in the Neapolitan language.
On 28 August 1733 the opera seria Il prigionier superbo was given at the Teatro San Bartolomeo. It contained the two-act comic intermezzo La serva padrona (The Maid Turned Mistress), and it was soon popular enough to be performed on its own. It helped opera buffa spread through Europe.
On 25 October 1734 the Teatro San Bartolomeo gave Adriano in Siria, which contained the intermezzo Livietta e Tracollo. In January 1735 L'Olimpiade was first performed at the Teatro Tordinona in Rome, and in the autumn of 1735 Il Flaminio, also in the Neapolitan language, was staged at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. All of Pergolesi's operas were first given in Naples except L'Olimpiade. In all he wrote ten works for the stage, three of them two-part intermezzos.
Alongside secular music, Pergolesi actively wrote sacred music. Among his works in this genre is a Mass in F. His best-known sacred work is the cantata Stabat Mater in F minor, written shortly before his death. The words come from the Italian Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi, who describes how the Virgin Mary grieved while Jesus Christ was crucified.
This chamber work is for soprano and alto with strings. The commission came from the Confraternita dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo, a brotherhood that each year organised a Good Friday devotion honouring the Virgin Mary. Pergolesi's piece replaced the Stabat Mater by Alessandro Scarlatti that Neapolitan churches had been performing on that day.
The new cantata soon overshadowed its predecessor and became the most frequently printed piece of music of the 18th century. Many composers arranged it. Johann Sebastian Bach used it as the basis for Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden, BWV 1083, set to a text that is not about Mary.
Pergolesi died in March 1736 in Pozzuoli of tuberculosis. He was 26 years old. He was buried the next day at the Franciscan monastery.
While he lived, Pergolesi was mostly known in the musical circles of Naples and Rome. After he died this changed: by the mid-18th century he was much better known than before, and his music appeared in print across the continent.
In 1752 an Italian troupe performed La serva padrona in Paris. This set off the so-called Querelle des Bouffons: admirers of the serious French opera of Lully and Rameau argued with fans of the new Italian comic opera. Pergolesi became the model of the Italian manner, and the controversy split Parisian musicians into two camps for two years. To Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the music's freshness and charm clearly proved that Italian opera was better than French lyric tragedy.
Little was known about the composer's life, which allowed invented stories to flourish: he was credited with Apollonian beauty and many tragic love affairs, and a rumour arose that he died not of illness but from poison given by jealous musicians. Many vivid tales told by his 19th-century biographer Francesco Florimo were later exposed as hoaxes.
Pergolesi belonged to the Neapolitan opera school and was one of the earliest important composers of opera buffa, that is, comic opera. He wrote ten works for the stage, three of them two-part intermezzos; among them is La serva padrona. The opera seria L'Olimpiade is the only one of his operas first staged in Rome rather than in Naples.
Sacred music is represented by, among other things, a Mass in F, the oratorio The Phoenix on the Pyre and the sacred drama about Saint William of Aquitaine, both from 1731. His best-known sacred work is the Stabat Mater cantata for soprano and alto with strings.
The standard catalogue of Pergolesi's works was compiled in 1977 by Marvin Paymer: each work has its own number with the letter P, and the Stabat Mater is listed there as P.77.
After Pergolesi's death, other people's music began to be attributed to him. For example, six concertos known as Concerti armonici were for a long time believed to be his, yet the real author proved to be Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, a Dutch composer. Even now some editions and recordings appear under his name although the authorship of those pieces is seriously doubted.
In 1920 Igor Stravinsky created the ballet Pulcinella, with choreography by L. F. Massine and designs by P. Picasso, in homage to the style of the man from Jesi. It was later established that only eight of the ballet's 21 pieces can confidently be attributed to Pergolesi.