Anthony Iannaccone
Born: October 14, 1943; Brooklyn, NY
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Anthony Iannaccone is an important American composer whose expressive manner has moved from the twelve-tone style of his early music to the more accessible character of most of his works after 1975. His music, always structurally sound, can often be intense or mysterious or exude both qualities, and though it can divulge diverse influences -- Stravinsky, Copland, and Diamond, for example -- it is quite individual, yielding both intellect and
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Biography |
by Robert Cummings
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Anthony Iannaccone is an important American composer whose expressive manner has moved from the twelve-tone style of his early music to the more accessible character of most of his works after 1975. His music, always structurally sound, can often be intense or mysterious or exude both qualities, and though it can divulge diverse influences -- Stravinsky, Copland, and Diamond, for example -- it is quite individual, yielding both intellect and passion.
Anthony Iannaccone was born in Brooklyn on October 14, 1943. He exhibited musical talent early on and began study on the violin and piano. His list of composition teachers is impressive: from 1959 to 1964 he studied with Aaron Copland; at the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned a Master's degree during the period 1961-1968, he studied with David Diamond, Vittorio Giannini, and Ludmila Ulehla; and at the Eastman School of Music, he studied with Samuel Adler, earning his PhD (1968-1971).
Iannaccone's earliest works date to the late '50s and include his Parodies for woodwind quintet (1958) and Piano Trio (1959). His first two symphonies came in 1965 and 1966, respectively, and other large works soon followed, mostly, however, in his less popular serial style. In 1971 Iannaccone began teaching composition at Eastern Michigan University, where he would soon found an electronic music studio. In 1973 he took over directorship of the early music ensemble Collegium Musicum.
By the early '80s, Iannaccone was producing some of his finest and most acclaimed compositions. His Divertimento for orchestra (1983) has been hailed for its melodic freshness and structural brilliance, while the Walt Whitman-inspired works -- Walt Whitman Song (1980) and A Whitman Madrigal (1984) -- divulge his deft hand in the vocal/choral genre.
In 1988 Iannaccone earned the National Band Association's first prize for his wind work, Apparitions, and two years later he won the SAT/C.F. Peters Competition for his Two-Piano Inventions (1990). Among his more important works from the 1990s are the highly and justly praised Night Rivers, Symphony No. 3 (1990-1992), and Waiting for Sunrise on the Sound, for orchestra (1998).
Iannaccone has remained active in the new century as a conductor and professor of composition at Eastern Michigan. However, his output, not large to begin with, has grown only scantily with the orchestral work From Time to Time (2000) and the Clarinet Quintet (2002), written on a commission for clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. |
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