GIOVANNI BATTISTA, one of the most celebrated musicians of the Neapolitan school. Among his biographers, Italian, French, German, and English, there are conflicting statements regarding his birthplace, the date of his birth, his surname, and the conservatory in which he was trained at Naples. By some of those he is surmised Jesi; by others Pergolese, or Pergolesi; and is said to have been born in 1704 or 1707 at Pergola, a small town in the duchy of Urbino; and to have been educated in the conservatory of St Onofrio at Naples. According to the Marchese di Villarosa, who published a biography of Pergolese in 1831, and who had in his hands the official certificate of the musician's birth and baptism, Pergolese was the true surname, his birthplace Jesi, a small town near Ancona in the Papal States, and the date of his birth ten o'clock on the night of the 3rd of January 1710. The Marchese di Villarosa asserts also that Pergolese was admitted in 1717 into the Neapolitan conservatory dei Poveri di J. C., and not into the conservatory of St Onofrio, as has been so often stated. There Pergolese studied the violin under Domenico de Mattesi, and musical composition under Gaetano Greco, and Durante, Greco's successor. It appears that Pergolese was patronized by the noble families Stigliani and Caracciolo. In his earlier productions he adhered to the severer style of Greco and Scarlatti, but afterwards adopted that of his fellow-student Vinci, who considered melodic freedom and dramatic expression to be the chief objects of music. Padre Martini remarked that some passages in the sacred music of Pergolese were more suitable for operatic compositions. His first great work was the oratorio of San Giuseppe d'Aquitania, in 1731. In 1731 and 1732 he composed his operas Sallustia, La Serenissima, La Fata Innamorata, Il Prigioniero Superbo, and in 1734 the opera Adriano in Siria, and the intermezzo Lirietta e Tracollo. In the same year he was appointed chapel-master of the church of Our Lady at Loreto. In 1735 he produced the operas I Flaminio and Olimpiade. Suffering from pulmonary consumption, he retired to Pozzuoli, near Naples, and there Periander composed his cantata Orfeo, a Salve Regina, and his famous Stabat Mater. He died there on 16th March, 1736, and was buried in the cathedral church. Besides the above-mentioned works, Pergolese composed the following:-A three-act intermezzo, La Contadina Astuta; II Geloso Schernito; two Salve Regina; a Mass for two choirs; a Misereere for four voices; a Confitebor for five voices; a Motett; a Mass for two voices; a Mass in D major; the score of an Oratorio on the Birth of Christ; a Landate, with accompaniments; a Dixit, with accompaniments; four Cantatas for a voice, with harpsichord and viola; a Mass for ten voices; a Dixit for ten voices; a Confitebor in Canto-Fermo for four voices; six Cantatas, three of them with accompaniments for violin, viola, and bass, and three with harpsichord accompaniments; a violin Concerto; and thirty Trios for two violins, violoncello, and harpsichord.