Pergolesi was a brilliant composer who, though he lived only until the age of 26, exerted a profound influence on the course of music history. His creative career lasted only six years, but in that time he produced a body of masterworks of incomparable beauty and originality. At the time of his death he was virtually unknown outside of Italy. However, years later when an Italian opera buffa troupe performed his intermezzo La serva padrona in Paris (in 1752), the work completely enchanted the public and touched off a furor heard throughout Europe -- La Guerre des Bouffons -- a battle between the partisans of the traditional French styles and the champions of the new Italian genre, led by Rousseau.

Through this debate the name Pergolesi became a household word throughout Europe almost overnight. This posthumous notoriety created an enormous demand for his music, a demand that copyists and publishers did not hesitate to satisfy by placing Pergolesi' s name on other composers' works in order to increase sales. It is for this reason that Pergolesi's record as a composer has long been obscured and distorted. Except for a handful of works, no one can to this day be sure of what he had actually written.

He was born frail and shortened his career by irregular conduct. At an early age he entered the Conservatory in his native city, studied the violin under Domenico Matteis, and afterwards enjoyed the guidance in composition of Gaetano Greco, Francesco Durante, and Francesco Feo. As a student he attracted attention by his sacred drama "San Guglielmo d'Aquitania" but, following the trend of his time, he devoted the next few years to the theatre, producing with more or less success "La Sallustia", "Amor fa l’uomo cieco", and "Recimero". He was not satisfied with these latter achievements, and when Naples was visited by an earthquake, Pergolesi was commissioned to write a mass for the solemn services of thanksgiving in the church of Santa Maria della Stella. Through this work for two five-part choirs and two orchestras, he became known as one of the most resourceful composers of the Neapolitan school. Shortly after he produced another mass for two choirs and later a third and fourth. Then the young master once more yielded to the allure of the theatre. The last two years of his life Pergolesi devoted almost entirely to the interpretation of liturgical texts (masses, a "Salve Regina", etc.), almost all of them for chorus and orchestra.

The work by which he is most remembered, is the "Stabat Mater"(1735) for two-part choir and stringed orchestra and organ, which he wrote shortly before his death for the Minorite monastery of San Luigi in Naples. The Stabat Mater is a setting of the sequence for the Feast of Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pergolesi composed the work for solo soprano and alto voices during the last few months of his tragically short life, which he spent in a Franciscan monastery at the well-known spa of Pozzuoli. His biographer Villarosa states that this was the composer's last work, and that it was written, fittingly, for the aristocracy at the church of S. Maria dei Sette Dolori in Naples as a replacement for Allesandro Scarlatti's Stabat Mater.