Francesca Verunelli

The challenge of composition according to the Italian composer Francesca Verunelli is to balance the temporal micro-unit of each individual sound with the macro-unit of listening to music. The aspect of time plays a central role in her works. Her composition “From scratch” (2024) for orchestra for example develops from a percussive scraping or scratching, successively revealing the overtone spectra including their innate rhythms. Many of her compositions are focused on other tuning systems beyond the pure well-tempered system as displayed in “Ultimi fiori” (2017) for solo cello in which oscillations are created through eighth-tones. The composer enters into dialogue with early music in “VicentinoOo” (2024): here Verunelli juxtaposes her own musical sequences with Nicola Vicentino’s madrigals from the 16th century composed using the division of the octave into 31 notes. Two sections of her “Songs & Voices” (2023) composed for the Neue Vokalsolisten Stuttgart, instruments and electronics are also focused on ancient folk songs. In Verunelli’s integrated ensemble piece “Five Songs (Kafka’s sirens)” (2016), she composed quasi songs without words, describing the two extremes in her work as “song without a voice and a voice without song” i. e. consonants without voiced sounds.

The Italian Francesca Verunelli (*1979) studied composition and piano in Florence and Rome, followed by studies in computer music at IRCAM in Paris. In her doctorate course at the University of Paris Sciences & Lettres, she intensified her research into experimental performance techniques and philosophical approaches. Since 2025, she has taught at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Verunelli has received many prizes and awards including the Silver Lion at the Biennale in Venice in 2010, the Composer’s Prize from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2020, the Premio della critica musicale Franco Abbiati 2022 (awarded by the Italian Critics’ association) and the SWR Orchestra Prize for “Tune and retune II” at the Donaueschinger Musiktage 2023. Travel scholarships have taken Verunelli to locations including the Villa Medici in Rome, the Casa de Velasquez in Madrid and GMEM in Marseille.