Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music | UCLA Library
Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music
The Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music is administered by the Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library to support contemporary music in a wide variety of ways.
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About the Fund
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
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Sponsoring
Resonate
, an open access call for scores with UCLA HASoM faculty.
Support contemporary music performances in the
Herb Alpert School of Music
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and Los Angeles.
A prize for the best music paper or project submitted for the
Library Prize for Undergraduate Research
Contemporary Music Score Collection
Published by the Music Library in
eScholarship
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, the institutional repository of the University of California, the
Contemporary Music Score Collection
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includes digital, open access scores.
To submit your composition for the collection, please complete the
Contemporary Music Score Collection Entry Form
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. For more information about how to use or search the collection, see the
Contemporary Music Score Collection Guide
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Resonate
Resonate
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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
Contemporary Music Score Collection
View the full Contemporary Music Score collection in eScholarship.
Open Recordings
View a collection of open recordings created with support from the Music Library Davise Fund.
2024 Davise Fund Recipients
View the projects and initiatives that have received awards from the Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music in 2024.
Call for Proposals
The Walter H. Rubsamen Music Library welcomes project proposals and requests to purchase contemporary music for the Music Library. 2026 proposals for Davise projects are due by 9 am on January 12, 2026. Applicants can expect to hear back in early February.
The typical maximum award amount is $3,500.
For selected proposals, the UCLA Library will transfer the award funds to the recipient's department or school fund manager. Before you apply, applicants must check with their fund manager to confirm that they can administer payments for the proposed project.
The 2026 selection committee:
Blair Black, music teaching and research services librarian
Ciara Brewer, music access services assistant
Jamie Hazlitt, director of Arts, Music, and Powell libraries
Matthew Vest, music inquiry and research librarian
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 submit your application.
About Hugo and Christine Davise
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.
Associated News
article
2025 Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music grant winners announced
February 27, 2025
Projects include commissions and performances of new compositions, launch of UCLA alumni podcasting service, participatory events and more
article
UCLA Library announces winning composition for Resonate 2024
September 17, 2024
Yi-Ting Lu’s “An Unopened Seashell” was selected from more than 500 entries
article
UCLA Library awards grants to nine faculty and student music projects
March 6, 2024
Funds from the Hugo and Christine Davise Fund for Contemporary Music will support new work, performances and research advancing contemporary music