Goffredo Petrassi

Goffredo Petrassi (16 July 1904 – 3 March 2003) was an Italian composer of modern classical music, conductor, and teacher.

In 1928, he entered the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome to study organ and composition for five years under Vincenzo di Donato.

[3] In 1933, composer Alfredo Casella conducted Petrassi's Partita for orchestra at the ISCM festival in Amsterdam.

Petrassi had many famous students, including Franco Donatoni, Aldo Clementi, Cornelius Cardew, Ennio Morricone, Karl Korte, Boris Porena, Norma Beecroft, Mario Bertoncini, Ernesto Rubin de Cervin, Eric Salzman, Kenneth Leighton, Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Dellaira, Armando Santiago, and Richard Teitelbaum.

In later years, Petrassi's open musical mind and acute personality led him to experiment with different post-Webernian influences and a wide range of poetic materials, from Latin hymns to Ariosto's La follia d'Orlando and Ritratto di Don Chisciotte (Portrait of Don Quixote), based on the Miguel de Cervantes literary character.