Alexandre Casaccia (b. 1991) is an Italian composer whose catalogue encompasses chamber, orchestral, piano and electroacoustic music. Raised in a musical family, he gave his first piano recital at the age of six and began composing during his teenage years.
Following his formal training as a pianist, he studied at the “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory in Milan, where his subjects included harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Paolo Arcà; organ, modality and Gregorian chant with Maria Cecilia Farina; and score reading at the piano with Simone Fermani. As part of his studies at the Conservatory, he also attended contemporary music masterclasses led by Alessandro Solbiati, Frédéric Durieux and Anton Safronov.
He subsequently specialised in composition at the “Luca Marenzio” Conservatory in Brescia with Paolo Ugoletti and Federico Biscione. On 24 March 2025, he completed his Master of Music in Composition with the highest mark under Biscione’s supervision. His thesis, La composizione cameristica per legni e pianoforte dalle origini ai giorni nostri, examined the historical development of mixed chamber ensembles and the continuing influence of eighteenth-century ideals on contemporary chamber music, taking an early version of his quartet High Strangeness, for flute, clarinet, bassoon and piano, as its case study.
Casaccia also holds a degree in History and International Relations from the London School of Economics. His interdisciplinary background informs his interest in musical memory, historical transmission and the cultural significance of artistic form. He has delivered lectures and seminars on the relationship between contemporary music and cultural history and is the author of From Palestrina to Bach: A Treatise on Counterpoint, alongside writings on music theory, history and aesthetics.
Eclectic in both taste and output, his work ranges from electroacoustic compositions to traditional chamber and orchestral music. His creative practice is grounded in the belief that song is an anthropological constant, and that pitch—especially in its linear unfolding—acts as the primary architect of musical form. In this spirit, his compositions seek to reawaken the expressive power of song within a contemporary sound world, bridging historical memory with experimental innovation in a process of mnemonic deformation. Memory thus functions both as a subject of his music and as a condition of listening, shaping how musical relationships emerge through recognition, expectation and altered return.
His early piano works were already performed publicly in 2017, when Mario Scucces premiered Tre Miniature Poetiche at the Sala Puccini of the Milan Conservatory. In 2022, Claudio Sanna gave the first performance of the Petite Suite at the Salone da Cemmo in Brescia. Research conducted for the Interactive Catalogue Raisonné, coordinated by Lili Ferrari in close collaboration with the composer, has traced the successive revision and regrouping of these early materials, including their eventual incorporation into Aspiration to Enfold All, Op. 7.
Casaccia completed his first electroacoustic composition, Sounds of Water, E. 1, in February 2024 under the guidance of Leonardo Cicala. Combining piano sounds with recordings of waterfalls and manipulated plastic, the work reflects on the relationship between the natural environment and human intervention. He continued his electroacoustic activity in 2025 with Trash-can Study, E. 2, and Wasteland, E. 3, presented at Mare Culturale Urbano in Milan as part of a transdisciplinary programme devoted to sound, image and film. Wasteland originated as music for Cement Anxieties, a short film directed by Casaccia, whose images of residential buildings, courtyards and seemingly endless corridors frame an exploration of urban alienation. The music’s manipulated piano sonorities and percussion drawn from empty wine bottles translate architectural unease into sound.
Casaccia’s profile developed further through Anatomy of Light, Op. 1, for alto saxophone and piano, with an alternative version for clarinet and piano. Commissioned for the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death, the work revisits Puccini’s lyrical idiom through instrumental writing. It was premiered by Francesca Fantini and Alessandro Zanotti at the Brescia Conservatory in May 2024 and subsequently performed at the “G. Cantelli” Conservatory in Novara and the “F. Bonporti” Conservatory in Riva del Garda. The following year, it was selected for the inaugural volume of the series Quaderni del Cantelli and published by Zecchini Editore in Trame pucciniane. Studi, documenti e ricerche artistiche.
During his postgraduate studies, Casaccia completed symphonic orchestrations of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 3, O. 1, and Debussy’s La Cathédrale engloutie, O. 2, in November 2024. These were followed in January 2025 by Neapolitan Fantasy, O. 3, a symphonic diptych based on the folk-influenced songs Funiculì Funiculà and La Danza. This practical work informed A Short Treatise on Orchestration, largely drafted during his final year of studies and published in 2026. The text examines orchestration as a structural act of interpretation, exploring how instrumental colour, register, spacing and balance reshape musical ideas.
Shades of Light, theme-less variations, Op. 2, was commissioned for Sartoria per Ottoni, a contemporary brass recording project involving the Conservatory’s Brescia and Darfo sites. Following workshop performances in 2024, the work reached its definitive version in 2025. Written for the Luca Marenzio Brass ensemble founded by Angelo Cavallo and Alessio Brontesi, the work exists in two instrumental variants and was recorded in studio and in concert in October 2025 under the direction of Federico Biscione.
His chamber catalogue expanded further with Ararat, Op. 3, commissioned by the Quintetto Pentafiati. Completed and published in 2026, the six-movement woodwind quintet is dedicated to the Spirit of the Armenian people, reflecting Casaccia’s ties to Armenian culture and his engagement with its inherited symbols as expressions of survival, transformation and renewal.
Later in 2026, Casaccia composed Impending!, Op. 4, an orchestral score for the educational audio documentary Climate Change and Its Impact on Human Health, produced by Mackenzie Everett. His second work specifically conceived to accompany another medium, it extends through instrumental writing an interest previously explored in the electroacoustic Wasteland. Alongside composing the score, he undertook its virtual realisation and mixed the music with Delanie Mora’s narration. The work places orchestral colour and carefully restrained textures at the service of the spoken word, joining his interests in orchestration, recorded sound and environmental themes.
The closing months of 2026 also saw the completion of three major piano works. Labyrinth, Op. 5, a three-movement cycle dedicated to the pianist and pedagogue Riccardo Insinga, was followed by the definitive version of Afterlight, piano sonata No. 1, Op. 6, dedicated to Lili Ferrari. The last to reach completion was Aspiration to Enfold All, Op. 7, commissioned by and dedicated to pianist and contemporary-music specialist Carlo Prampolini: thirty-two preludes in two books followed by the postlude Enfolding Horizon. Combining newly composed music with extensively reworked materials whose documented origins reach back to 2017, these works give Casaccia’s long engagement with the piano three distinct large-scale forms and mark the culmination of a formative period in his compositional development.
Casaccia’s music has attracted commissions and performances from an expanding circle of accomplished interpreters, including Alessio Brontesi (trombone), Angelo Cavallo (trumpet), Francesca Fantini (saxophone), Carlo Prampolini, Claudio Sanna and Alessandro Zanotti (piano), and ensembles such as Luca Marenzio Brass and Quintetto Pentafiati; it has also been performed under the baton of conductors Federico Biscione and Leonardo Perico. Together with repeat performances of his works, studio recordings and publication by Zecchini Editore, these artistic relationships mark the emergence of a composer whose lyrical voice is matched by intellectual ambition and exacting craft.