Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Pergolesi already died at the age of 26. His premature death marked the start of a cult status that was quite remarkable for the 18th century. Especially Pergolesi's comic work La Serva Padrona became extremely popular. In Paris, this comedy put a lot of pressure on the old-fashioned, subsidised opera culture of Lully and Rameau. 

His Stabat Mater for soprano and alto was not any less succesful, and it became the most re-published work of the 18th century. Everyone would have heard of the opening of this work at least once, with its equally poignant and refined interplay between consonants and dissonants. None other than Bach himself made an arrangement of this Stabat Mater, which he then named Tilge, Höchester, meine Sünden (BWV.1083).