Biography

Rebecca SAUNDERS

© Astrid Ackermann

With her distinctive and intensely striking sonic language, Berlin-based British composer Rebecca Saunders (b.1967) is a leading international representative of her generation. Born in London, she studied composition with Nigel Osborne in Edinburgh and Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe.

Saunders pursues an intense interest in the sculptural and spatial properties of organised sound. chroma I - XX (2003-2017), Stasis and Stasis Kollektiv (2011/16) are expanding spatial collages of up to twenty-five chamber groups and sound sources set in radically different architectural spaces. Insideout, a 90-minute collage for a choreographed installation, created in collaboration with Sasha Waltz, was her first work for the stage and received over 100 international performances. Most recently in 2017, Yes, an expansive 80-minute spatial installation composition, was written for Musikfabrik, Donatienne Michel-Dansac and Enno Poppe for the extraordinary architectural spaces of the Berlin Philharmonie and the St. Eustache Cathedral in Paris.

Since 2013, Saunders has written a series of solos and duos for performers with whom she has collaborated closely over many years, including Bite (2016) for bass flute, Aether (2016) for bass clarinet duo, dust (2017/18) for percussion, O (2017) for soprano, hauch (2018) for violin, and Flesh (2017/18) for accordion. She has simultaneously pursued her keen interest in works in the concertante form, writing a double percussion concerto Void (2014), a trumpet concerto Alba (2015), and both Skin (2016) and Yes (2017) for soprano and large ensemble. Alba and Void marked the close of a triptych of works which also includes the violin concerto Still (2011). In 2016, her extended violin concerto Still (2011/16) was performed in collaboration with the choreographer Antonio Rúz, the dancers of Sasha Waltz & Guests, Carolin Widmann, the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie and Sylvain Cambreling. In 2018 her double bass concerto Fury II was choreographed by Emanuel Gat in collaboration with Ensemble Modern as part of the Story Water project.

Saunders´ music has been performed and premiered by many prestigious ensembles, soloists and orchestras including Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Quatuor Diotima, Ensemble Dal Niente, Asko|Schönberg, the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Resonanz, Ensemble Recherche, ICE, the Neue Vocalsolisten, Ensemble Remix, SWRSO, WDRSO and the BBCSO, amongst many others.

Her many international prestigious awards include the 2019 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the ARD und BMW musicaviva Prize, the Paul Hindemith Prize, four Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, four BASCA British Composer Awards and the GEMA Music Prize for Instrumental Music. In 2015, Saunders received the Hans und Gertrud Zender Foundation Prize and the prestigious Mauricio Kagel Music Preis. Accordionist Teo Anzellotti’s CD, ...of waters making moan, which included Saunders’ eponymous work, won the German Record Critics’ Award of the Year for 2016.

Saunders is in great demand as a composition tutor and teaches regularly at the Darmstadt Summer Courses and at the Impuls Academy in Graz.  She lives in Berlin and is a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts and the Sachsen Academy of Arts in Dresden.

https://www.rebeccasaunders.ne

Work(s)

" Wound "

For ensemble and orchestra

Peters

2023 SELECTION

38'

> Commissioned by Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande,
Ensemble intercontemporain, Casa da Música Porto & Radio France

> First performance by Ensemble intercontemporain, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
conducted by Jonathan Nott at musica viva - räsonanz concert
at Prinzregenttheater Munich on 29th September 2022.

wound /wuːnd/

noun      1. an injury to an organism, usu. involving division of 5ssue or rupture of the integument or mucous membrane, due to external violence or some mechanical agency rather than disease.
              2. an injury or hurt to feelings, sensibilities, reputation, etc.

verb       to inflict a wound upon (someone or something); injure; hurt. [Pre-10C: OE wund; O.Frisian wunde; OG wunta; ON und; Goth. wunds]

Wound  Cut, tear, break, rip open, pierce the skin or flesh; mortify, grieve, offend. Of violence, disfigured and defaced.
A lesion ingrained on the skin - marred, a mark of difference.
The imperfect surface, frayed edges, cracks in the veneer.
The implication of vunerability: the exquisite fragility and imperfection that makes us human. Silence is the canvas on which the weight of sound leaves its mark. Sound rips open the surface of silence, or peels back its skin, zooms in, and falls into the netherworld, seeking that which lies within.

" This corporal revenge. A genuine, concerted and systemaic undoing of grace. Every promise discovered too late to be a fucking lie told badly. The promise of in5macy and the promise of beauty ripped away to reveal a gawping, hyperreal brute…
Every follicle a valve or a thin brass pipe in some vast, breathing instrument….
I wanted to speak of a cursive comprised of a single, sweeping line - written in skin, on skin and under skin; a line of dead, tinted, coiled skin, drawn on to the most sensitive ground. Held in place in raw, dermite proximity.”
Air for Concrete, A primer for Cadavers by the British artist Ed Atkins

R.Saunders, Aug. 2022 

" Skull "

For 14 instruments

Ed. Peters

2024 SELECTION

Skull was composed in 2023 for large ensemble. It forms the final part of a triptych together with the works Skin (2016) and Scar (2019). The three compositions can be performed separately or together.

In Skull the instrumentation difffers greatly from the other works. The central timbral focus lies with the lower range of the wind and brass instruments, and the piano and e-guitar are replaced with an analogue electric Korg BX3 draw-bar organ, chosen for its flexibility and striking sound.

Skull is the longest work at 38 minutes and with it I sought a cohesive formal unity for the triptych. Simultaneously, and in stark contrast to Skin and Scar, Skull pursues a complex web of lyrical polypony stretching from the very first sound to the final fermata.

Skull partially draws on Skin and Scar, setting up passing points of reference, and reflecting on timbral fragments, individual gestures and sounds inherent to the earlier works.
These fragments are both diffused and condensed, transformed and mutated, and seek to delve from the outermost surface of the acoustic body to the edge of the innermost, of conciousness - as it were, to to the skeletal essence within.

This quotation from Haruki Murakami's Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World elucidates this central image:

“The skull is enveloped in a profound silence that seems nothingness itself.
The silence does not reside on the surface, but is held like smoke within.
It is unfathomable, eternal, a disembodied vision cast upon a point in the void.”

Commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Festival Acht Brücken | Musik für Köln, Oslo Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contrechamps, La Biennale di Venezia,  The World Premiere was 01.05.2023 at the Köln Philharmonie as part of the Acht Brücken Festival, by Ensemble Modern, conducted by Bas Wiegers.

Rebecca Saunders