Michael Finnissy was born in Brixton, South London. He started composing aged four, and was self taught until he gained a Foundation Scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1965, where his principal mentor was Bernard Stevens. While there he secretly planned that his future work would assemble a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ - an individualised account of world music, representing (with affection and irony) all periods and genres.
His ideology and aesthetics have been influenced by the Underground and avant-garde cinema of Markopoulos, Brakhage, Jack Smith, Warhol, Pasolini, Jarman and Godard; the painters Hokusai, Cézanne, Degas, David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg; and composers Erik Satie and Charles Ives. He served as president of the ISCM/IGNM from 1990 until 1996. His work has also focused on theatre (vocal and dance) and on non-professional music-making, with CoMA (Contemporary Music for All) and church choirs. He is an Emeritus Professor of Composition at the University of Southampton, UK.