Antonio Giacometti

Antonio Giacometti was born in Brescia on 29 December 1957. After studying the humanities and graduating in New Approaches to Teaching Composition at the Milan Conservatory, he developed his expertise in music education, a field in which he has been active since 1984 as both a writer and an educator.

He has received prizes and distinctions in national and international composition competitions, including the Valentino Bucchi Prize, Rome (1982 and 1988); the international guitar composition competition in Sablé-sur-Sarthe (1983 and 1987); the MC2 international composition competition, Avignon (1984); the second Antidogma Musica international competition, Turin (1985); the Trio Basso Köln international composition competition (1988); the first national competition for young people’s ensemble compositions, Como (1989); the ninth Ennio Porrino national composition competition, Cagliari (1991); the Kazimierz Serocki competition, Warsaw (2000); the fourth Città di Udine international competition (2002); Hungarian Radio’s Hommage à Bartók, Budapest (2006); the first Bruno Maderna international composition competition for youth orchestra, Treviso (2010); and the first Monodramma international composition competition, Desenzano (2013). His catalogue, developed from 1979 onwards, includes more than 160 solo, chamber, orchestral and music theatre works, many performed at festivals and concert series worldwide.

Giacometti has served on the national board of SIEM, the Italian Society for Music Education, and as president of its Brescia branch. Since 1984 he has collaborated with the branch on approaches to music education for children and on its publishing activities. He has written articles and essays for the society’s quarterly journal Musica Domani and its monographic supplements. From 2006 to 2012 he also edited the journal’s regular Cantieri sonori column.

His interest in musical analysis, particularly its implications for teaching composition, led him to become a founding member of SIdAM, the Italian Society for Musical Analysis, on whose national council he served for nine years. For more than a decade he contributed to Analisi, the journal of music theory and education published by Ricordi/Curci.

He has taught composition at the Orazio Vecchi–Antonio Tonelli institute in Modena and Carpi, serving as its director from 2013 to 2019. Private organisations and public institutions, including universities, the Ministry of Education and regional educational research institutes, have invited him to lead seminars and professional development courses for schoolteachers. These have focused particularly on the role of ensemble music and composition in the musical education of children and young people.

In 2011 and 2015 he travelled to Brazil to give masterclasses on his composition work and lectures and workshops on ensemble music for children and young people. The host institutions included the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, the University of Barra Mansa, the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, and the Villa-Lobos Institute, part of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UniRio).

His works have been published by Ricordi, Suvini Zerboni, EDIPAN, Rugginenti, Bérben, Éditions Delatour, Agenda Edizioni Musicali, Sconfinarte and RAI Com.