PERGOLESI (or PERCOLESE), GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1710-1736), Italian musical composer, was born at Jesi near Ancona on Jan. 3, 171o. He was sent by a noble patron to com plete his education at Naples, where he became a pupil of Greco, Durante and Feo for composition and of Domenico de Matteis for the violin. His earliest known composition was a sacred drama, La Conversione di S. Guglielmo d' Aquitania, between the acts of which was given the comic intermezzo ll Maestro di musica. These works were performed in 1731, probably by fellow pupils, at the monastery of St. Agnello Maggiore. Pergolesi was then com missioned to write an opera for the court theatre, and in the winter of 1731 successfully produced La Sallustia, followed in 1732 by Ricimero, which was a failure. Both operas had comic intermezzi, but in neither case were they successful. After this he abandoned the theatre for a time and wrote thirty sonatas for two violins and bass for the prince of Stigliano. In September 1732 he returned to the stage with a comic opera in Neapolitan dialect, Lo Frate inammorato, which was well received ; and in 1733 he produced a serious opera, ll Prigionier, to which the celebrated Serva padrona furnished the intermezzi. About this time (1733-1734) Pergolesi accompanied the duke of Maddaloni to Rome. The failure of L'Olirnpiade at Rome in January 1735 was followed by a conspicuous success with his comic opera Il Flamini° at Naples in September of the same year. In 1736 he
was sent by the duke of Maddaloni to the Capuchin monastery at Pozzuoli, the air of the place being considered beneficial to cases of consumption. Here he is supposed to have written the celebrated Stabat Mater; Paisiello, however, stated that this work was written soon after he left the Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesii Cristo in 1729. Of quite a different nature was the humorous, not to say improper, Scherzo fatto ai Cappuccini di Pozzuoli. Pergolesi died prematurely on March 17, 1736, and was buried in the cathedral of Pozzuoli.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The most complete life of Pergolesi is that by E. Faustini Fasini (Ricordi, 5900) ; G. Annibaldi's II Pergolesi in Pozzuoli, vita intima (Jesi, 189o) gives some interesting additional details de rived from documents at Jesi, but is cast in the form of a romantic novel. H. M. Schletterer's lecture in the Sammlung musikalischer V ortrtige, edited by Count P. von Waldersee, is generally inaccurate and uncritical, but gives a good account of later performances of Per golesi's works in Italy and elsewhere. Complete lists of his composi tions are given in Eitner's Quellen-Lexicon and in Grove's Dictionary (1927).