Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista    (1710-1736)		As a child Pergolesi studied with Santini; at sixteen he was sent to Naples where he studied with Durante and Feo. Pergolesi had a remarkable ability for improvising on the violin. In his brief lifetime Pergolesi produced many operas, oratorios, cantatas, shorter sacred music, and some instrumental works.  He is best known for "La serva padrona" (Rome, 1735), a splendid example of early opera buffa. Pergolesi left a number of settings of liturgical texts, a body of music considerably augmented by later false attributions. The well known setting of the Stabat mater, for soprano, alto, strings and organ, was written at Pozzuoli in 1736, during his final months of retirement in a Franciscan monastery there in anticipation of his death.   Bach is known to have adapted and performed this work. In spite of tuberculosis, which took him at 26 years of age, Pergolesi maintained an optimistic outlook, continuing to compose to the very end.
Pergolesi's early death left much of his music unpublished, and his subsequent fame led to the wrong attribution of a number of works, as composers or promoters sought to make use of his posthumous reputation. Stravinsky's delightful ballet score for Dyagilev's Pulcinella made use of music that was entirely, if erroneously attributed to Pergolesi.
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