Pergolesi was a composer of instrumental music who wrote for the stage and for the church.

He was of considerable importance in the development of Italian comic opera in the early 18th century.

He studied in Naples and became maestro di cappella there in the service of the prince of Stigliano in 1732.

He is particularly remembered for two compositions that are very different in character, "La Serva Padrona" and "Stabat Mater".

He died from tubercolosis at the age of 26 leaving much of his music unpublished.

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.

Pergolesi's opera La Serva Padrona, an intermezzo performed together with another opera, was first staged in Naples in 1733.

The work later won international fame, particularly in Paris, when a production in 1752 gave rise to the so-called Guerre des bouffons between the rival French and Italian opera companies. Stravinsky's delightful ballet score for Dyagilev's Pulcinella made use of music that was entirely, if erroneously attributed to Pergolesi.

Pergolesi left a number of settings of liturgical texts, a body of music considerably augmented by later false attributions.

The deeply moving Stabat Mater (Mary’s lament on the death of Christ), for soprano, alto, strings and organ, was written at Pozzuoli in 1736, during Pergolesi’s final months of retirement in a Franciscan monastery.