Sospeso presents the world premiere of Michael Finnissy's homage to Elliott Carter, Diamond Suburbia, a work written for Sospeso, on Friday, January 30, 2004. 

He was a foundation scholar at the RCM (1965–8) where he studied composition with Stevens and Searle and piano with Edwin Benbow and Ian Lake, followed by composition study in Italy with Vlad. He created the music department of the London School of Contemporary Dance, has taught at the Dartington Summer School, Winchester College, Chelsea College of Art and the University of Sussex, and was musician-in-residence to the Victoria College of the Arts, Caulfield, Australia (1982–3). From 1990 to 1996 he was president of the ISCM. He is currently professor of composition at the RAM and at Southampton University. 

As an accomplished pianist associated with the virtuoso solo repertory from Liszt to Xenakis, it is hardly surprising that the course of Finnissy's own creative development has been punctuated by significant piano works, as well as by hundreds of occasional pieces. The piano, for Finnissy, fulfils the gamut from sketch pad to full orchestra – from the brief yet expressive Short but … (1979) to the solo piano accompaniment to his second opera, Thérèse Raquin (1992–3). English Country-Tunes (1977), an epic nine-movement cycle, established Finnissy internationally as a voice of originality and distinction, and this has been followed by further large-scale statements for piano such as the Folklore cycle, as well as substantial sets of piano transcriptions: the Verdi Transcriptions (1972–95), Gershwin Arrangements (1975–88) and More Gershwin (1989–90).

These works attest the eclectic nature of Finnissy's musical imagination. He draws overtly on a wealth of musical sources, both in order to invigorate his own work, and to challenge contemporary audiences into re-evaluating their own musical heritages. Music by composers as disparate as Carver and Brahms, Purcell and the Strauss family, has all found its way into his works. More especially, following the example of Grainger, he is fascinated by the traditional music of many of the world's cultures. Folklore (1993–4) works explicitly with this material, treating a melody such as the negro spiritual Deep River in a variety of different ways, eventually absorbing it entirely into his own musical vocabulary. Speak Its Name! (1996) begins with a kaleidoscope of over a hundred diverse folk melodies, all playing at the same time. By contrast, English Country-Tunes does not quote actual folktunes but expresses Finnissy's ambiguous attitude to his own history by inventing a lyrical ‘English’ pastoralism, which it then destroys. In all these cases, the presence of folk or folk-derived material symbolizes both some kind of ‘innocent’, ‘original’ response to music-making and the possibility of its corruption or obliteration in the modern world.

Politics – often a polemical kind – is central to Finnissy's work. Like Ives, an important precursor and influence, he believes that all music is, in some sense, ‘programmatic’, that is, it exists in a cultural context, it reflects the concerns of the composer and his or her culture, and it can be a genuine force for change. Hence his interest in folk music (which is never ‘abstract’); hence his increasingly overt espousal of gay themes in works such as Unknown Ground (1989–90), Shameful Vice (1994–5) and Seventeen Immortal Homosexual Poets (part of The History of Photography in Sound, 1997–); hence his Christian works, such as Anima Christi (1991) and The Liturgy of St Paul (1991–5); and hence his active commitment as a pianist playing and commissioning new work from young composers, and as a distinguished teacher at all levels.

The breadth of expressive intentions of Finnissy's music is achieved through a correspondingly wide range of musical devices, from pseudo-plainchant melodies and simple accompaniments to densely layered textures, microtonal harmony and intricate rhythmic notation. Rarely is a single work concerned only with one kind of music: English Country-Tunes contains both manic Totentanz and simple, decorated monody; Speak its Name! moves from multiple, simultaneous melodic fragments to a unison tune. His music can manifest a profound violence – as many of the works from the 1970s demonstrate – as well as a contemplative spirituality, as can be heard in much of his music from the 1990s. Finnissy's music rarely fails to court controversy. He is often aligned with other exponents of the so-called ‘new complexity’, though it is a label he rejects because, he argues, even the ‘simplest’ music can be ‘complex’ – hence his continuing commitment to music for amateurs and children, e.g. East London Heys (1985–6) and Wee Saw Footprints (1986–90). Underlying these changing stylistic surfaces, however, is a consistent response to his varied musical materials: the ‘complex’ proliferation of detail out of something essentially ‘simple’, and an overriding concern for drama and directness of expression, equally evident in his grandest public statements – The Undivine Comedy (1985–8) and the primordial Red Earth (1987–8) – and in his smallest piano miniatures. Finnissy's is undeniably a unique and forthright voice in 20th-century British music.

Jonathan Cross, from the New Grove.