Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy : Bright Futures, Dark Pasts

Critical Perspectives on Michael Finnissy covers a wide range of topics pertinent to the critical reception and analysis of Finnissy’s practices, including: the connection between his works and cinema; performance practices; political contexts and pre-texts; his influence as a performer of experimental music; philosophical approaches to understanding his notation, and his influence as a teacher and professor of composition, amongst others. This important volume brings together the diverse range of approaches taken in understanding Finnissy’s work, while also addressing the evolution of Finnissy’s aesthetics and works since the last major survey of his music.

The composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is an unmistakeable presence in the British and international new music scene, both for his immeasurable generosity as prolific composer for many different types of musicians, major advocate for the works of others, and performer and conductor who has also been a driving force behind ensembles; he was also President of the International Society for Contemporary Music from 1990 to 1996. His vast and enormously varied output confounds those who seek easy categorisations: once associated strongly with the ‘new complexity’, Finnissy is equally known as composer regularly engaged with many different folk musics, for working with amateur and community musicians, for a long-term engagement with sacred music, or as an advocate of Anglo-American ‘experimental’ music. Twenty years ago, a large-scale volume entitled Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy gave the first major overview of the output of any ‘complex’ composer. This new volume brings a greater plurality of perspectives and critical sensibility to bear upon an output which is almost twice as large as it was when the earlier book was published. A range of leading contributors – musicologists, composers, performers and others – each grapple with particular questions relating to Finnissy’s music, often in ways which raise questions relating more widely to new music, and provide theoretical foundations for further of study both of Finnissy and other composers.