Pergolesi's best works appear to present in a concentrated form what has since been spread by others over hundreds of operas and masses. It is impossible not to trace their influence in the works of Jommelli, of Cimarosa, of Haydn (in oratorio), and of Mozart. Yet there remains a something which is still essentially Pergolesi's own.
One important fact is too little remembered. Owing to the false dates usually given for his birth, Pergolesi is commonly supposed to have lived to be 33. Between this and 26, the age at which he actually died, there is the difference of perhaps the seven best years of young maturity. When we think how small is the number of composers who would be remembered now for what they wrote before they were five-and-twenty, and bear in mind that Pergolesi's last works show no symptom of exhausted power, but the reverse, we cannot but wonder what he might have originated and achieved had he been spared to benefit by wider experience and more stimulating opportunity. His career, as it was, is a mere suggestion. Could it have been fulfilled, it seems not impossible that one Italian eighteenth-century composer might have belonged not to Italy only, but to the world.
The following list of Pergolesi's works is copied from Fétis's 'Biographie des Musiciens.'
Operas and Intermezzi.
- La Sallustia.
- Amor fa l'uomo cieco; 1 act.
- Recimero; 3 acts.
- La Serva Fadrona; 1 act. The original score published in Paris [ by Lachevardière. An edition with French words published by Leduc.
- Il Maestro di Musica. Also published at Paris under the name of Le Maître de Musique.
- Il Geloso schernito.
- Lo Frate innamorato. Buffa opera, in Neapolitan dialect.
- Il Prigionier superbo.
- Adriano in Siria.
- Livletta e Tracolo.
- La Contadina astuta.
- Flaminio; 3 acts.
- L'Olimpiade; 3 acts.
- San Guglielmo; sacred drama.
Church Music.
- Kyrie cum Gloria; 4 voices and orchestra (pub. Vienna, Haslinger).
- Mass; 5 voices and orchestra.
- Mass; Two 5-part choirs and double orchestra.
- Dixit; 4 voices, 2 violins, alto, bass, and organ.
- Dixit; double chorus and orchestra.
- Miserere; 4 voices and orchestra (Paris, Pleyel).
- Confitebor; 4 voices.
- Domine ad adjuvandum; 4 voices.
- Do.; 5 voices.
- Laudate; 5 voices and orchestra.
- Laetatus sum; 2 sopranos and 2 basses.
- Laetatus; 5 voices.
- Laudate; single voice with Instruments.
- Salve regina; single voice, 2 violins, alto, bass, and organ (Paris, Leduc, and Porro).
- Stabat Mater for soprano and contralto; 2 violins, alto, bass, and organ (Paris, Bonjour, also Porro; Lyons, Carnaud. Five different editions with PF. accompaniment have been published at Paris. Here also was printed Paisiello's edition, with wind-instrument parts added by him. Two German editions with German words—one, in score, Schwickert, at Leipzig; the other, with PF., Christiani, at Hamburg. Hiller adapted Klopstock's Passion to the music of the Stabat, arranged for 4 voices, with the addition of oboes and flutes.) It has been recently published in London by Mr. Hullah.
- Dies iræ; soprano and contralto; 2 violins, alto, and bass.
- Mass; 2 voices and organ.
- Mass in D; 4 voices and orchestra.
- Oratorio sacro per la nascita del Redentore.
Chamber and Concert Music.
Orfeo; cantata for single voice and orchestra. (Choron has printed the score in his 'Principes de composition des Ecoles d'Italie.')
Five cantatas for soprano with clavichord.
Thirty trios for 2 violins and violoncello, with figured bass.
Villarosa also mentions:—(1) Solfeggi for 2 and 3 voices; (2) Giasone, (3) Cantata for 5 voices; (4) A collection of cantatas or songs printed in London; (5) Confitebor, for 2 voices; and various fragments of less importance, existing in manuscript in different private collections.
Two movements from Psalms for 6 voices unaccompanied, and two for the same with orchestra, are published by V. Novello in his Fitzwilliam music. The Fitzwilliam Library also contains a Mass, and a Kyrie and Gloria for 10 voices. A volume in the Add. MSS. of the British Museum (No. 5044) contains 3 Psalms, a Stabat, Salve, and Mass. These are all probably included in the above list. An air in F minor for clavier is published in Clauss-Szarvady's Klavierstücke (Leipzig, Senff).
PERI, Jacopo, a Composer to whom, notwithstanding the small amount of his learning, the world owes a heavy debt of gratitude, was born of noble parentage, at Florence, during the latter half of the 16th century, and first studied Music under the guidance of Cristoforo Malvezzi, of Lucca. The Florentines, always celebrated for their ready invention of surnames, called him Il Zazzerino,[1] a little bit of pleasantry provoked by the enviable wealth of golden hair which he managed to preserve uninjured, almost to the day of his death. After completing his musical education he was appointed Maestro di Cappella, first, to Fernando, Duke of Tuscany, and afterwards to Duke Cosmo II. Having thus attained an honourable position, he married a noble and richly-dowered lady, of the House of Fortini, by whom he had a son, who bade fair to become a distinguished mathematician, but ultimately brought himself to ruin by his dissolute habits and abandoned life, indulging in such excesses, that his tutor, the great Galileo Galilei, was accustomed to speak of him as 'my Dæmon.' Notwithstanding this domestic trouble Peri mixed in all the best society in Florence, and chose for his associates some of the most advanced leaders of the great Renaissance movement, which, even at that late period, was still in progress, though its best days had long since passed away. We hear of him especially at the house of Giovanni Bardi, Conte di Vernio, where, in company with Vincenzo Galilei, Ottavio Rinuccini, Giulio Caccini, Pietro Strozzi, Jacopo Corsi, and other restless spirits imbued with the classical furore for which the age was so strongly distinguished, he assisted in that memorable attempt to restore the mode of declamation peculiar to Hellenic Tragedy which resulted at last in the discovery of modern Recitative. Whether the first idea of this invention originated with Peri, with Caccini, with Emilio del Cavaliere, it is now impossit to decide. In all probability it suggested itself in consultation; and each Composer endeavoured to carry it out in his own way, though the ways of all were so similar that it is very difficult to detect the symptoms of true individuality in any of them. V. Galilei and Caccini undoubtedly produced the first Monodic Cantatas in which the new style was attempted; but their efforts were confessedly tentative, and their productions conceived upon a very small scale, fitted only for use as Chamber Music. Peri took a higher flight. At the instigation of Jacopo Corsi, and the Poet Rinuccini, he attempted a regular Musical Drama, called 'Dafne.' The Libretto for this was supplied by Rinuccini, and Peri composed the Music entirely
- ↑ Literally 'Short-hair.' But in this case used ironically.
