Vincent Persichetti (born June 6, 1915 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; died August 14, 1987 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an American composer, music educator and pianist.

Persichetti began his musical life at a young age, first studying the piano, then the organ, double bass, tuba, theory and composition. By the age of eleven he was paying for his own musical education and helping by performing professionally as an accompanist, radio staff pianist, church organist and orchestra performer. At the age of sixteen he was appointed choir director for the Arch Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, a post he would hold for the next twenty years. During all of this, Persichetti was a student in the Philadelphia public schools and received a thorough musical education at the Combs College of Music, where he earned a degree in 1935 under Russel King Miller, his principal composition teacher.

Starting at the age of twenty, he was simultaneously head of the theory and composition departments at the Combs College, a conducting major with Fritz Reiner at the Curtis Institute and a piano major with Olga Samaroff at the Philadelphia Conservatory. He received a diploma in conducting from the Curtis Institute and graduate degrees from the Philadelphia Conservatory. In 1947 he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music, and became the chairman of the Composition Department in 1963.

Persichetti composed for nearly every musical medium, with more than 120 published works. Although he never specifically composed "educational" music, many of his smaller pieces are suitable for teaching purposes. His piano music, a complete body of literature in itself, consists of six sonatinas, three volumes of poems, a concerto and a concertino for piano and orchestra, serenades, a four-hand concerto, a two-piano sonata, twelve solo piano sonatas, and various shorter works. His works for winds rank as some of the most original and well-crafted compositions in the medium, and his Symphony No. 6 is rightly considered one of the "cornerstones" of the genre.

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