CW30

When I was at UNH, from 1995-1999, my favorite professor was Michael Annicchiarico, a composer. (He’s still there. 💕) I studied theory and ear training with him—a beautifully-designed interlocking whole, beginning with species counterpoint in the fall of 95, and finally arriving at the Tristan chord in the spring of 97, at the foothills of the “emancipation of the dissonance.” I hung on every word. He was (and surely still is) a brilliant guy and a gifted teacher. He was kind, but he wasn’t easy—he took the material (and the way it was taught) very seriously. There wasn’t a Music Composition major for undergraduates at the time (there is now), but I studied composition privately with him my junior and senior years. (I graduated with a B.A. in “Music Theory (with a focus on Composition).”)

Me and my friends also thought he was cool because he was into jazz. He loved Miles Davis’s 60s Quintet—particularly Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. When I was there, he was working his way through writing (stunning) big-band arrangements of every song on Speak No Evil. I remember talking to him about High Life when it came out.

It was around that time that he told me about the sus4 (b2) chord (DO RA FA SO) that Herbie and Wayne were into—I remember him playing it for me on the piano in his office. This was the chord that I called the “Fifth Beatle” tetrachord two weeks ago.