is said to have broken his health, and determined him to abandon the theatre for the Church, this statement is, however, incompatible with the fact that his comic opera Il Flaminio was produced in Naples in September of the same year with undoubted success. His ill health was more probably due to his notorious profligacy. In 1736 he was sent by the duke of Maddaloni to the Capuchin monastery at Pozzuoli, the air of the place being considered beneficial to cases of consumption. Here he is commonly supposed to have written the celebrated Stabat Mater; Paisiello, however, stated that this work was written soon after he left the Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesù Cristo in 1729. We may at any rate safely attribute to this period the Scherzo fatto ai Cappuccini di Pozzuoli, a musical jest of a somewhat indecent nature. He died on the 17th of March 1736, and was buried in the cathedral of Pozzuoli.
Pergolesi’s posthumous reputation has been exaggerated beyond all reason. This was due partly to his early death, and largely to the success of La Serva padrona when performed by the Bouffons Italiens at Paris in 1752. Charming as this little piece undoubtedly is, it is inferior both for music and for humour to Pergolesi’s three-act comic operas in dialect, which are remembered now only by the air “Ogni pena piu spietata” from Lo Fraté inammorato. As a composer of sacred music Pergolesi is effective, but essentially commonplace and superficial, and the frivolous style of the Stabat Mater was rightly censured by Paisiello and Padre Martini. His best quality is a certain sentimental charm, which is very conspicuous in the cantata L’Orfeo and in the genuinely beautiful duets “Se cerca, se dice” and “Ne’ giorni tuoi felici” of the serious opera L’Olimpiade; the latter number was transferred unaltered from his early sacred drama S. Guglielmo, and we can thus see that his natural talent underwent hardly any development during the five years of his musical activity. On the whole, however, Pergolesi is in no way superior to his contemporaries of the same school, and it is purely accidental that a later age should have regarded him as its greatest representative.
Bibliography.—The most complete life of Pergolesi is that by E. Faustini Fasini (Gazzetta musicale di Milano, 31st of August 1899, &c., published by Ricordi in book form, 1900); G. Annibaldi’s Il Pergolesi in Pozzuoli vita intima (Jesi 1890) gives some interesting additional details derived from documents at Jesi, but is cast in the form of a romantic novel. H. M. Schletterers lecture in the Sammlung musikalischer Vorträge, edited by Count P. von Waldersee, is generally inaccurate and uncritical, but gives a good account of later performances of Pergolesi’s works in Italy and elsewhere. Various portraits are reproduced in the Gazz. mus. di Milano for the 14th of December 1899, and in Musica e musicisti, December 1905. Complete lists of his compositions are given in Eitner’s Quellen-Lexicon and in Grove’s Dictionary (new ed.). (E. J. D.)
PERGOLESI, MICHAEL ANGELO, an 18th-century Italian decorative artist, who worked chiefly in England. Biographical details are almost entirely lacking, but like Cipriani he was brought, or attracted, to England by Robert Adam after his famous continental tour. He worked so extensively for the Adams, and his designs are so closely typical of much upon which their reputation rests, that It is impossible to doubt his influence upon their style. His range, like theirs, was catholic. He designed furniture, mantelpieces, ceilings, chandeliers, doors and mural ornament with equal felicity, and as an artist in plaster work in low relief he was unapproached in his day. He delighted in urns and sphinxes and interlaced gryphons, in amorini with bows and torches, in trophies of musical instruments and martial weapons, and in flowering arabesques which were always graceful if sometimes rather thin. The centre panels of his walls and ceilings were often occupied by classical and pastoral subjects painted by Cipriani, Angelica Kauffmann, Antonio Zucchi, her husband, and sometimes by himself. These nymphs and amorini, with their disengaged and riant air and classic grace, were not infrequently used as copies for painting upon that satinwood furniture of the last quarter of the 18th century which has never been surpassed for dainty elegance, and for the popularity of which Pergolesi was in large measure responsible; they were even reproduced in marquetry. Some of this painted work was, apparently, executed by his own hand, most of the pieces attributed to him are remarkable examples of artistic taste and technical skill. His satin-wood table-tops, china cabinets and side-tables are the last word in a daintiness which here and there perhaps is mere prettiness. Pergolesi likewise designed silver plate, and many of his patterns are almost instinctively attributed to the brothers Adam by the makers and purchasers of modern reproductions. There is, moreover, reason to believe that he aided the Adam firm in purely architectural work. In later life Pergolesi appears, like Angelica Kauffmann, to have returned to Italy.
Our chief source of information upon his works is his own publication, Designs for Various Ornaments on Seventy Plates, a series of folio sheets, without text, published between 1777 and 1801.
PERI, JACOPO (1561–16 ?), Italian musical composer, was born at Florence on the 20th of August 1561, of a noble family. After studying under Cristoforo Malvezzi of Lucca, he became maestro di cappella, first to Ferdinand, duke of Tuscany, and later to Cosmo II. He was an important member of the literary and artistic circle which frequented the house of Giovanni Bardi, conte de Vernio, where the revival of Greek tragedy with its appropriate musical declamation was a favourite subject of discussion. With this end in view the poet Ottavio Rinuccini supplied a drama with the title of Dafne, to which Peri composed music, and this first attempt at opera was performed privately in 1597 in the Palazzo Corsi at Florence. This work was so much admired that in 1600 Rinuccini and Peri were commissioned to produce an opera on the occasion of the marriage of Henry IV. of France with Maria di’ Medici. This work (L’Euridice) attracted a great deal of attention, and the type once publicly established, the musical drama was set on the road to success by the efforts of other composers and the patronage of other courts. Peri himself seems never to have followed up his success with other operas; he became maestro di cappella to the duke of Ferrara in 1601, but after the publication of his Varie musiche a una, due e tre voci at Florence in 1609, nothing more is known of him.
Peri’s Dafne (which has entirely disappeared) and Euridice (printed at Florence 1600; reprinted Venice 1608 and Florence 1863) are of the greatest importance not only as being the earliest attempts at opera, but as representing the new monodic and declamatory style which is the basis of modern music as opposed to the contrapuntal methods of Palestrina and his contemporaries. Peri’s work is of course primitive in the extreme, but it is by no means without beauty, and there are many scenes in Euridice which show a considerable dramatic power.
PERIANDER (Gr. Περίανδρος), the second tyrant of Corinth (625–585 B.C.). In contrast with his father Cypselus, the founder of the dynasty, he is generally represented as a cruel despot, or at any rate as having used all possible devices for keeping his city in subjection. Among numerous anecdotes the following is characteristic. Periander, on being consulted by the tyrant Thrasybulus of Miletus as to the best device for maintaining himself in power, by way of reply led the messenger through a cornfield, and as he walked struck off the tallest and best-grown ears (a legend applied to Roman circumstances in Livy i. 54). It seems, however, that the prevalent Greek tradition concerning him was derived from the versions of the Corinthian aristocracy, who had good reasons for giving a prejudiced account, and the conflicting character of the various legends further shows that their historical value is slight. A careful sifting of the available evidence would rather tend to represent Periander as a ruler of unusual probity and insight, and the exceptional firmness and activity of his government is beyond dispute. His home administration was so successful that he was able to dispense with direct taxation. He fostered wealth by the steady encouragement of industry and by drastic legislation against idleness, luxury and vice; and the highest prosperity of the Corinthian handicrafts may be assigned to the period of his rule (see Corinth). At the same time he sought to check excessive accumulation of wealth in individual hands and restricted the influx of population into the town. Employment was found
