Skip to main content
eScholarship
Open Access Publications from the University of California

Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library

UCLA

Contemporary Music Score Collection

The Contemporary Music Score Collection is published by the Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library. The collection includes digital, open access scores. The Contemporary Music Score Collection is made possible because of the Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music. For more information about the Davise Fund, please visit: https://www.library.ucla.edu/music/hugo-davise-fund-contemporary-music.

Dialogue in A for flute solo

(2024)

for flute solo, 9/20/19 version.

Hear on Yodh, Iwona Glinka (flute), Phasma Music

  • 1 supplemental PDF
Cover page of Variations on a Theme by Ravel

Variations on a Theme by Ravel

(2024)

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.

Cover page of Breath, Smoke, Crystals

Breath, Smoke, Crystals

(2024)

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.

Cover page of "Rumination and Manifestation" for Tenor Sax and Piano

"Rumination and Manifestation" for Tenor Sax and Piano

(2024)

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.

Cover page of Homenaje al músico ágrafo

Homenaje al músico ágrafo

(2024)

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.

Cover page of Of Immeasurable Sadness

Of Immeasurable Sadness

(2024)

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.

  • 1 supplemental audio file
Cover page of Sinfonie Nr. 3 Faust-Paraphrase "Die Rache der Engel" Und ein Weihnachtslied

Sinfonie Nr. 3 Faust-Paraphrase "Die Rache der Engel" Und ein Weihnachtslied

(2024)

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library.

Cover page of The Boat and the Sea

The Boat and the Sea

(2024)

I composed The Boat and the Sea as a celebration of my first love. This piece is inspired by a poem by Xuân Quỳnh (1942–88), one of the most well-known female poets in Vietnam since the twentieth century. Her poem, “Thuyền và Biển” [The Boat and the Sea], is a love letter that describes a woman’s heart through several stages of love. At first, she is a mysterious sea, so enticing yet far away. Then, as her heart grows fonder, she is like gentle ripples, but some other times, she becomes vehement waves that push the boat for no reason. And if she is ever separated from her love, all that remains in her are tumultuous storms.

In the performers' score, I quote lines from the poem at the beginning of each musical section to suggest the desired characteristics of the music.* Several extended techniques for the alto saxophone and percussion imitate sounds from the ocean, such as winds, storms, moving sand, the seagulls' chirping, and whales' vocalization. For the electronic percussion, I use the recordings from A Collection of Sounds from the Sea on the website of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)** as the sound samples.

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.

  • 1 supplemental audio file
Cover page of The Other Side of Infinity

The Other Side of Infinity

(2024)

With its upward and downward movements across the keyboard, this minimalism-influenced work reflects metaphorically the journey to the other side of infinity. In mathematics, when a variable diverges to positive infinity it sometimes returns from the opposite side, moving upward from negative infinity. (This is seen, for example, in trigonometry, in the graph of the tangent function.) In human terms, a traveler who does not understand that the world is round would be surprised, upon circumnavigating the globe, to arrive back home. That this could happen in space as well is hard for our minds to grasp. This return from infinity is also seen in ideology—zealots sometimes switch from one extreme to another rather than traveling through the center.  9/22/20 version 

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library.

  • 1 supplemental PDF
Cover page of Padma Tamarasa for Solo Soprano Saxophone

Padma Tamarasa for Solo Soprano Saxophone

(2024)

The words 'Padma Tāmarasa' are Sanskrit and refer to the red lotus flower that opens at first light. The piece evokes the mood of a prayer being sung at early morning from a high tower, slowly emerging and returning to a place of quiet and reverence. 

This music score was submitted for Resonate 2024: An Open Access Call for Scores by the UCLA Music Library with Bent Frequency and Jan Berry Baker.

  • 1 supplemental audio file