Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music

The Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library administers the Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music to support contemporary music in a wide variety of ways including, but not limited to:

• The purchase of material for the Music Library: scores, books, recordings, media and online resources.
• The preservation, conservation and digitization of this material.
• Sponsoring scholarly conferences, exhibits, concerts and residencies at UCLA.
• Commissioning new musical works for UCLA musicians and ensembles, the manuscripts to become part of the Music Library's collections.
• Parts rentals for Herb Alpert School of Music students and ensembles.
• Rental of special instruments for student performances.
• Composition competitions for student composers.
• Publication of the Contemporary Music Score Collection(opens in a new tab).
• Sponsoring Resonate, an open access call for scores with UCLA HASoM faculty.
• Support contemporary music performances in the Herb Alpert School of Music(opens in a new tab) and Los Angeles.
• A prize for the best music paper or project submitted for the Library Prize for Undergraduate Research.

Resonate(opens in a new tab) is an open access call for scores series sponsored by the Music Library Davise Fund with HASoM faculty performers. Entering composers can submit their works to the Contemporary Music Score Collection.

The Music Library welcomes project proposals as well as requests for purchases of contemporary music for the Music Library. Proposals for projects are considered on a rolling basis, with the first consideration occurring in the fall quarter. The available funds vary yearly; requests made later in the fiscal year may be asked to wait until the following year, if all funds have been allocated. Most projects do not receive funding exceeding $3,500.

We seek projects that:

• involve music since 1900.
• integrate music scholarship and practices across HASoM and UCLA.
• engage with diverse communities at UCLA or in Los Angeles.
• include underrepresented composers or musicians.
• develop open access publications.

Please use our proposal form(opens in a new tab) to apply.

Hugo Davise was born Hugh Edward Davies in 1907. A lifelong Angeleno, Davise graduated from UCLA with undergraduate degrees in music education ('31) and philosophy ('33) and with a master's in philosophy ('34). He worked for the Department of Agriculture during World War II. After the war, he spent much of his career teaching at Santa Monica College and Los Angeles City College. His devotion to music was unwavering but private; he did not seek out acclaim or public performances. Yet he studied and composed in the most significant styles of the twentieth century, producing atonal, polytonal and modal works, and developing his own compositional system in response to that of Arnold Schoenberg.

Christine Davise, née Albin, was born in 1899 in Iowa and graduated from UCLA with a degree in music in 1927.

Hugo Davise taught privately into his late eighties. His students learned strict counterpoint, composition, and music history. His former student, composer Ginger Mayerson, writes, "Hugo was a great teacher; I learned a lot about composition, music history, and a few things about myself…I think Hugo and Christine between them knew almost everything about western music and it was wonderful to listen to them talk about it." Although he wrote in multiple genres, the bulk of his music is for solo piano, his own instrument. Thanks to his bequest to the Music Library, many Davise scores are available in the Performing Arts Special Collections as photocopies. Originals are held in the private collection of composer Marco Marinangeli, Davise's student and protégé for over fifteen years, who considers Davise one of the exceptional musical minds of the twentieth century. Christine passed in 1991, and Hugo in 2000. Stephen Fry, former music librarian at UCLA, helped establish the Davise Fund in the early 1990s.

Biography by Andrea Moore.