Michael Finnissy was born in Tulse Hill, London in 1946. He was a Foundation Scholar at the Royal College of Music, London, where he studied composition with Bernard Stevens and Humphrey Searle, and piano with Edwin Benbow and Ian Lake. Later, he studied in Italy with Roman Vlad.
Finnissy is a prolific composer and his curiosity about a wide range of music - especially folk – combines with a fascination in mathematical structures. This interplay between ideas symbolizing the innocent, unconditional response to music-making, and rigorous, intellectual processes frequently creates an emotional quality in his work that has been described as 'a happy melancholia'. The shifts in balance between these two aspects have given rise to a variety of works, from the 'complex' pieces where rhythmically independent melodies are piled on top of each other, fragmented and decorated, to compositions which focus on the quality of a single line given the simplest of accompaniments.
Finnissy created the Music Department of the London School of Contemporary Dance, and has been associated as composer with many other dance companies including London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Ballet Rambert, Strider, and Second Stride. He has taught at Dartington Summer School, Winchester College, the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music, Chelsea College of Art and is a guest lecturer at many colleges and universities. He has also been Musician-in-Residence to the Victorian College of the Arts, the City of Caulfield in Australia, and the East London Late Starters Orchestra. He continues to teach at the Royal Academy of Music in London and has recently been appointed to the Chair London and has recently been appointed to the Chair in Composition at the University of Southampton.
In 1990 he was appointed President of the International Society of Contemporary Music. He was re-elected in 1993, and in 1998 was made an Honorary Member of the ISCM. 1996, Finnissy's fiftieth birthday year, was celebrated with recitals of the complete piano music by Ian Pace, recordings of orchestral and chamber works on NMC, and the publication of a festschrift by Scolar Press.
In May 1998, as part of the Oxford Festival of Contemporary Music, Nicholas Hodges gave the première of part of The History of Photography in Sound, an extraordinary epic work for piano which is divided into five books and many chapters. Most of this vast work is now complete. More recently, False Notions of Progress (1998) was premièred by Pipers 3 in London and then toured around the country, and another chapter of The History of Photography in Sound was given its first performance by Ian Pace in Cheltenham in November 1998. In May 1999 the recently completed book of 20 Tangos will be premièred by Ian Pace at the BMIC in London.
Future projects include a commission for a major work for the Brunel Ensemble in 2000, conducted by Chris Austin, and an opera based on the life of Oscar Wilde.
Web: http://www4.oup.co.uk/music/repprom/finnissy/

Compositore e pianista, nato a Londra nel 1946. Ha studiato al Royal College of Music di Londra con B.Stevens, e con Roman Vlad a Roma. Interprete virtuosistico, e compositore ha adottato tecniche d'avanguardia.