Rebecca Saunders

The music of Rebecca Saunders is characterised by a highly nuanced sonic complexity. Her interest in tone colour and its transition into noise is reflected in titles such as Blue and Gray (2005) for two double basses and Vermilion (2003) for B-flat clarinet, electric guitar and violoncello. Saunders has also drawn inspiration from the writings of Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, transforming the stream-of-consciousness technique into a compositional approach. One example is Yes (2017), inspired by Ulysses and in particular Molly Bloom’s inner monologue, a literary source that has informed a number of her works since Crimson – Molly’s Song (1995).

Saunders uses her small-scale compositions, including instrumental solos and duos, as modules in spatial compositions and concert installations. These include Chroma (2003–2021) and the concert collage Rockaby (2017–2024) for five instruments and 200 musical boxes in which Saunders combines and interweaves her own compositions, for example Blaauw (2004) for Marco Blaauw’s double-valved trumpet and Breath (2020) for two violins, to create a spatial concert installation in which the individual pieces are distributed throughout the performance space and arranged in overlapping temporal layers. Here the musical boxes provide a sound texture formed by numerous melodies sounding simultaneously but not synchronised. They are activated by both musicians and members of the audience and are either spread out on the floor or arranged in a wall sculpture as in Myriad, which is in turn intended to be played in the concert installation Myriad II alongside solo pieces performed in various spaces around the room. Saunders has also combined her music collage Hauch (2021) with optional dance, consisting of a variety of instrumental solos which can be interwoven with dance solos. Since her work Insideout (2003), Saunders has repeatedly collaborated with choreographers including Sasha Waltz, developing the spatial aspects in the interaction between dance and music. Her music theatre composition Lash received its premiere at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 2025.

The British composer Saunders (*1967) studied with Nigel Osborne in Edinburgh and Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe before settling in Berlin. Since 2010, she has taught regularly at the Darmstadt Summer Course and has given additional master classes. She has worked in intensive collaborations with orchestras, for example during her phases as capell-compositrice with the Staatskapelle Dresden in 2009/10 and as a composer in residence at the Konzerthaus Dortmund in 2005/06. In 2019, she became the first female composer to be awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and in 2024 the Golden Lion for Music at the Venice Biennale. She has received several Royal Philharmonic Society Awards and British Composer Awards and was presented with the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize by the German arts foundation Kunststiftung NRW. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Huddersfield and the University of Edinburgh. Saunders is a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts, the Saxon Academy of the Arts in Dresden and the Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts.