Michael Finnissy


Michael Finnissy is an English composer and pianist.
Finnissy has taught at the Royal Academy of Music, the University of Sussex, and is Professor of composition at the University of Southampton and is Composer in Residence at St. John's College Cambridge

Music

Works

Style

Finnissy's works for the piano are notable for their extreme demands on technique. They include his 36 Verdi Transcriptions, written between 1972 and 2005.
Finnissy is concerned with the political aspects of music, and he believes that all music is 'programmatic' to some degree, that is, a composition exists in not just the composer's mind, but inside a culture that reflects both the extra-musical and purely musical concerns of the composer. Music, far from being unable to express anything other than itself is a force for change. This engagement with political and social themes became more frequent as his career progressed. For example, the influence of homosexual themes and concerns began to enter his work; as in Shameful Vice in 1994, and more explicitly in Seventeen Immortal Homosexual Poets in 1997.