Pergolese was hardly fit to do any work in these days, but he had accepted a commission from the confraternity of San Luigi di Palazzo, in Rome, and was determined to execute it. The subject was a "Salve Regina," and he was to receive for it the munificent sum of ten ducats—equivalent, perhaps, to about eight dollars of the present currency. Like Mozart, laboring over this "Requiem," Pergolese gave his last thought and his last strength to this anthem, and had hardly completed it when, on the 16th of March, 1736. he died. There were rumors at the time, which even had some currency years later, that he had been poisoned, the isolation of his retreat and the peculiarity of some of his symptoms suggesting the possibility of this. But, apart from the fact that his physical condition and his known habits explained his maladies and their inevitable termination, Pergolese was not a figure of sufficient importance to excite jealousy or animosity. His life had not been a public one in the full sense of the word, and in the lyric drama, where he desired most to shine, he had made but one real success—that of "La Serva Padrona."
Hardly had the young composer's body been buried—in the little cathedral at Pozzuoli—when a sudden and extreme admiration for his music broke out in Italy, and soon spread to other countries. Naples, in her tardy enthusiasm, justified the reproach of Dr. Burney, who wrote, "Had she known her own happiness, Naples might have boasted of possessing one of the greatest geniuses she or the world had ever produced. The first opera of Giovanni Battista Pergolese was performed at her second theatre! The young composer found not among his countrymen minds sensible of his extraordinary talents or that acknowledged the natural maxim of Horace, 'Bonus sis felixque tuis.' His native land was the last to discover, or to confess, his superior powers."
Two years after its author's death the "Olimpiade" was reproduced in splendid fashion at Rome and received with honor. The "Serva Padrona" was translated into other languages and heard in many European cities. It reached Paris about 1750, and although performed by inferior singers, it created so deep an impression,—subsequently increased by "Il Maestro di Musica,"—that some French authorities have not hesitated to say that this music almost revolutionized theatrical art and led to the establishment of comic opera as it has been since understood in France. His sacred music was also introduced in the Concerts Spirituels and greatly applauded as among the chief sensations of the time. Pergolese is judged to have had his first adequate hearing in England in 1724. The poet Gray had brought home from Italy fine reports of the new music, and in that year the "Olimpiade" was put upon the stage of the King's Theatre, then directed by the Duke of Middlesex. It had not a distinguished success, but one air, "Tremende oscure atroci," became an established favorite in concerts with the principal Italian tenors for ten years after.
For a good many years after Pergolese's death his music, both dramatic and sacred, was in the highest esteem throughout Italy, and received the tribute of much imitation. His "Stabat Mater," which may be regarded as the best of his ecclesiastical compositions—unless some should prefer the "Salve Regina"—even held its own, and not in Italy alone, by any means, until it was superseded by the larger and more popularly written work of Rossini.
The rush of modern music and the modifications in taste have pushed the scores of Pergolese from the theatre and the concert room, and no later performances of his operas are to be noted as of consequence since the double revival of "La Serva Padrona" in Paris, in 1863, when the original version was given at the Italiens and the French translation at the Opéra Comique, Mesdames Galli-Marié and Penco carrying off the honors. The instrumental trios are never heard nowadays, and although Catholic choirs throughout the world still keep his church music in use, it is only upon rare occasions that the "Stabat Mater" is produced for Protestant auditors by some serious-minded choral society.
Pergolese was a quite industrious writer, if allowance be made for the diversions caused by his personal indulgences, and for the discouragement which was naturally produced upon a temperament like his by the lack of appreciation, sympathy and material support, individual patronage having undoubtedly contributed at least as much to his material and spiritual comfort and development as public applause and sustenance. He was not a rapid writer, however, and the record of his compositions, so far as they are known, includes besides the operas which have been already named, a large cantata entitled "Orfeo;" five minor cantatas; an oratorio having for its subject the Nativity; the thirty trios already alluded to; five masses, and a dozen or so of religious pieces. A considerable number of the vocal scores were published and twenty-four of the trios were printed in London or Amsterdam, but the minor religious works and some of the operas remained in manuscript and are practically inaccessible except to studious inquirers in Italian libraries.
It is not difficult to establish now a just estimate of the genius of Pergolese, which was undervalued during his lifetime, then suddenly exalted above its worth and then again depreciated below its true plane. It was seldom that the external form of his compositions gave an adequate idea of the spiritual qualities which dwelt within them. Wise and careful observers often remarked that they heard with surprise and delight much which they had not anticipated from an examination of the scores. Educated strictly in the severe and learned Neapolitan school, he was of course a master of counterpoint and of all the devices and figures of musical effect, which, as has been said, constituted the staple of his first pieces. But he had an intuitive sense of the dramatic element in man and in music, and he made this felt, alike in the humorous sprightliness of "La Serva Padrona," the emotional piety of the "Salve Regina," and the pathetic strophes of the "Stabat Mater."
Except in his grand operas and his ecclesiastical pieces, he asked for no large forces of singers or players. In his masses he wrote as usual for four voices, although he seems to have preferred five, and he not infrequently required in them two choirs, each in five parts. The "Stabat Mater" is for two voices only, and its accompaniment is so simple and so thin that Paisiello subsequently wrote additional instrumentation for it. The "Serva Padrona" has only two characters and the accompaniment requires only the string quartet; yet so ingenious, so bright, so gay and so apposite is all the music, that the hearer never finds it monotonous or tedious.
That Pergolese should have began his musical life as a violinist and yet should have written for the voice with perfect expressiveness and exact adaptation, has sometimes been thought strange. But his is by no means an isolated case, for many of the best writers of vocal music have begun their studies as instrumentalists and have even excelled as performers; besides which, he put aside the violin as soon as the larger scope of his gifts was discovered and further improved his feeling for the voice by association with Vinci and Hasse when he was once free of the Conservatory.