Emanuele d' Astorga (1688-1736) was celebrated as a singer and as a composer, and also for his romantic and rather melancholy life. His "Stabat mater," is a composition full of religious fervor and sweet pathos, as well as original in form and melodic invention. Leonardo Leo (1694-1741), who was superior to Astorga, wrote about fifty operas (one for the debut of the soprano Caffarelli), many masses, and a famous Miserere for eight voices. Francesco Feo (1699-1750) was a noble and learned master, who wrote the operas "Ipermestra" and "Andromache."
Lionardo da Vinci (1690-1732), who is sometimes confounded with the great painter of the same name, wrote the operas "Silla" and "Siface." A love quarrel caused his untimely death by assassination.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1737) was a pupil of Greco, Durante, and Feo. As an opera composer his only success was "La Serva Padrona," an intermezzo which was performed in nearly every theatre in Europe. Among Pergolesi's productions as a church composer, the "Stabat Mater," for two female voices with a string-quartet accompaniment, enjoyed for a while extraordinary popularity.
Nicolo Jomelli's (1714-1774) tender and pathetic style rendered him exceedingly popular, both in Italy and in Germany. He wrote sacred and dramatic music. Mozart said of Jomelli: "He is so brilliant in his own particular way that none of us will be able to put him aside: but he should not have attempted to compose church-music in the old style." Nothwithstanding this judgment by Mozart, it is an undeniable fact that Jomelli was the only composer of his time who treated the ecclesiastical style in an almost perfect manner.
Giovanni Paisiello (1741-1815) showed his true greatness most clearly on the stage, and attained a reputation so enduring that his best opera, "Il barbiere di Siviglia," produced at St. Petersburg in 1777, was only after great opposition displaced to make room for Rossini's masterpiece of the same name.
Nicolo Porpora (1686-1766) was very celebrated as a teacher of singing, but also enjoyed, for some time, great popularity as an opera composer.
One of the most important scientific musicians of the eighteenth century was Padre Martini, who was born at Bologna in 1706. He was first taught music by his father, Antonio Maria. He learned singing and violin playing in his youth, and had lessons in counterpoint from Antonio Riccieri, a castrato of Vincenzo and a composer of merit. In 1725, after having been ordained, he became maestro di capella of the church of San Francesco in Bologna. He thus gradually acquired an extraordinary and comprehensive mass of knowledge, with an amount of literary information far in advance of his musical contemporaries. His library was unusually complete for the time. He possessed, for instance, ten copies of Guido of Arezzo's very rare Micrologos. Scientific men of all countries took pleasure in sending him books.