Clara Iannotta was born in Italy in 1983. She studied flute at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome and began her career performing professionally with several ensembles. She studied composition at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan (2006-2010), where she worked with Alessandro Solbiati, and then at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) (2010-2012), where she studied with Frédéric Durieux. In 2010-2011, she participated in Cursus 1 (IRCAM’s composition and computer music class). She then moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate in composition at Harvard University, where she studied with Chaya Czernowin, completing her PhD in 2018.

In the course of her studies she also participated in numerous master classes and workshops, including with Chaya Czernowin, Steven Takasugi, and Hans Tutschku at Harvard’s Summer Composition Residency, with Brian Ferneyhough, Mark Andre, and Hèctor Parra at Royaumont Voix Nouvelles, with Franck Bedrossian and Pierluigi Billone and the International Academy of Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, and with Beat Furrer, Hanspeter Kyburz, Tristan Murail, Ivan Fedele, Bruno Mantovani, and Hugues Dufourt at Centre Acanthes.

She has served as the artistic director of the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik festival since 2018. In 2018-2019, she was a resident at the Villa Medicis, where she worked on her first piece for orchestra and her third string quartet. Since 2022, she is the co-artistic director of the festival Klangspuren Schwaz. Since 2023, Clara Iannotta is professor in composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

Iannotta has received commissions from Radio France (for Présences and Alla Breve), the French Ministry of Culture, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Westdeutschen Rundfunk, and Musica Femina München, among others.

Her compositions have been performed by ensembles such as 2e2m, the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Ensemble Recherche, Multilatérale, Neue Vocalsolisten, the Arditti and Diotima quartets, and the K/D/M trio, at festivals including ECLAT Stuttgart, Wittener Tage für Neue Musik, the Festival d’Automne in Paris, and Présences.

In 2018, Iannotta was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Composers’ Prize, the Hindemith-Preis, and the Prix Francis et Mica Salabert, awarded by the SACEM. In 2019, she was awarded the Una Vita nella Musica - Giovani Prize, presented by La Fenice (Venice, Italy). In 2022, she was appointed a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

Some of her pieces are inspired by poetry and literary works, such as Intent on Resurrection — Spring or Some Such Thing, which was inspired by reading the collected poetry of Irish poet Dorothy Molloy. A Failed Entertainment was inspired by American writer David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest.

Iannotta’s music is characterized by the use of extremly subtle sounds, often in high registers, whose harmonics are made audible through amplification, such as in her string quartet Clangs or D’Après, for ensemble – both of which were inspired by the bells of the cathedral of Freiburg im Breisgau.

Her scores are published by Peters.