Giovanni Battista Pergolesi – Critical Editions

National Edition of the Works of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Published by Casa Ricordi in collaboration with Fondazione Pergolesi-Spontini (Jesi) and Centro Studi Pergolesi (University of Milan)
General editor:
Claudio Toscani

The extraordinary notoriety that Giovanni Battista Pergolesi enjoyed after his death rendered immortal the historical figure of the musician from Jesi but at the same time it had the effect of grossly distorting the body of his work. In fact, from as early as the 18th century the success of Pergolesi’s music in Europe generated such a huge demand for his compositions that unscrupulous copyists and publishers were able to satisfy it only by attaching his name to the music of other composers. In this way the number of works by Pergolesi multiplied in a wholly artificial manner.

It has only been in relatively recent times that researchers have made the decisive advances necessary to liberate the Pergolesi corpus from the cluttering presence of false attributions. Starting from the 1950s studies carried out on the sources have made it possible to identify with precision Pergolesi’s hand-writing and modus operandi and in this way to establish the overall number of compositions that can be attributed with certainty to the Jesi musician. In 1986 the publishing companies Pendragon and Ricordi set in train the joint publication of a new edition of the works of Pergolesi (The Complete Works), but after the release of the first four volumes between 1986 and 1994 the work came to a halt.

The idea of taking up this work again and bringing it to completion, founding it on new bases and adhering to criteria of academic rigor and practical utility, arose out of discussions within the Pergolesi Committee of the Fondazione Pergolesi-Spontini (Jesi). In view of the 300th anniversary of the birth of the composer the foundation took the decision to give concrete form to a project that had been tenaciously cultivated and already solidly conceived by Francesco Degrada. The initiative has revealed itself to be a natural outlet for the work of a range of scholars who in more recent years have prepared for the Foundation and Casa Ricordi a number of critically revised performance scores for use in the Pergolesi Festival.

The National Edition of the Works of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was instituted by the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Cultural Initiatives following upon a proposal by the Fondazione Pergolesi-Spontini. The National Edition has availed itself of the collaboration of the Centro Studi Pergolesi – established in 2008 as an interdepartmental research center at the University of Milan – for archive material and research support.