Anna Rubin

for soprano/mezzo soprano and piano

Night of Nights/Nacht der Nächte (composed in 1998, rev. 2020)

So Many Oceans (composed in 2021)

White Serpent/Weiss Schlange (composed in 2022)

German Jewish poet and Nobel laureate Nelly Sachs created a unique body of work commemorating the Holocaust. She and her mother managed to flee Germany on the last flight allowed out of Germany to Sweden and lived there for the rest of her life.

In Night of Nights/Nacht der Nächte, Sachs manages in a few lines to express an enormous depth of loss and desolation with the hope of eventual redemption. I have made my own translation of the poem and included some German from the poem because of the unique vividness of the poet’s language. The musical language of the piece veers towards and away tonality and exploits many pianistic colors. Julia Fox, soprano, and Sandrine Erdely-Sayo premiered Night of Nights at the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sedona, in 2021.

White Serpent/Weisse Schlange contains a wild conflation of images – emptiness and the anger of a grenade, fire, and ice along with the strange images of a white snake and ice. All these images roll into the final image of time and eternity on the back of a snail. The relentless quality of that last image governs the pulse that governs the piece, against which brief melodies flare.

Click here to view the score for Night of Nights (English).

Click here to view the score for the Nacht der Nächte (German).

Click here to watch a YouTube video of the performance of Night of Nights.

Click here to view the score for So Many Oceans.

Click here to view the score for White Serpent (English).

Click here to view the score for Weisse Schlange (German).

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

5 instrument version for flute (piccolo), clarinet in Bb (bass clarinet), violin, cello, and piano

6 instrument version for flute (piccolo), clarinet in Bb (bass clarinet), violin, cello, piano, and percussion (vibraphone)

ca. 10'30"

Dreaming Fire, tasting Rain was originally written while I was working on my Ph.D at Princeton University. The Nash Ensemble of London premiered the work at Princeton. The 6 instrument version includes percussion and is intended for performance by the Ruckus Ensemble at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The images of fire and rain translated into a variety of musical textures – sometimes serene and sometimes jagged and thorny. In the opening, heterophonic or layered melodies surge and then subside. A middle section begins with the lonely sound of the piccolo against spiky cello pizzicati and then builds to a driving pulsed rhythm, intensified with percussion. The music then eases into a lyrical cello melody against a background of rolling piano chords and flute and violin countermelodies.

The 5 instrument version has been performed at Oberlin College Conservatory, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and the Heidelberg College Festival of Women.

The 6 instrument version of the piece premieres in 2024 at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording for 5 instruments.

Click here to view the score for 6 instruments.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for fixed media and Baroque oboe, modern oboe, or violin

ca. 5'30"

Stolen Gold, for amplified baroque oboe (or modern oboe or violin), live electronics, and digital audio is a one-movement piece. The digital audio portion was created in the Csound synthesis program and uses three classes of sounds – glissandi varying in character from subtle to long and sweeping, clouds of pointillistic sounds, and drones. The oboe weaves sinuous and melismatic melodies around these events as well as emulating some of the synthesized glissandi. Amplification of the live instrument allows it to blend with the digital audio. The harmonic language of the piece is freely atonal and based on a variety of invented modes. The oboe/violin and the synthesized sound alternate in prominence, continually shifting in whether one or the other is more dominant. At other times they seem to meld, only to suddenly deviate. The title has a two-fold personal meaning – at the time of first learning Csound, a complex Unix-based application, I struggled to find an expressive outlet through the rigors of its program language. Achieving compelling sounds felt like a triumph of both will and wilyness, as if I had stolen the treasure from a heartless machine.

The baroque oboe version of this piece has been recorded on Capstone Records (Debra Nagy) and the violin version has been recorded on Albany Records (Airi Yoshioka). The performer for the modern oboe version is Patricia Morehead. The piece has been performed many times including at the Ohio Composers of Electroacoustic Music Festival, Oberlin (2002), and the NYC International Fringe Festival (as music for Colette Searls’ puppet production, Basura, 2005). It has been featured at such festivals as the Festival de la Cité Lausanne, 2012, the Scotia Music Festival, Halifax, 2013, and as presented by "der/gelbe/klang" Ensemble, Munich (2024).

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording of the version for Baroque oboe.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording of the version for modern oboe.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording of the version for violin.

Click here to download performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for alto saxophone and harp

ca. 8'44"

Silk and Steel was commissioned in 2010 by the duo Pictures on Silence, comprised of Jacqueline Pollauf, harp and Noah Getz, alto saxophone. The opening section is very romantic, featuring melismatic alto sax melodies over intricate harp accompaniment. A more whimsical rhythmic section follows where figures are tossed back and forth between the instruments. This leads into more dramatic material emphasizing extreme ranges between the instruments and a rocking low figure in the harp. Eventually the piece makes its way back to a reprise of the opening material. While exploiting a variety of textures between the two instruments, I explore various quasi-tonal harmonic structures and scales, sliding from suggestions of whole tone collections to Middle Eastern and atonal scales.

Silk and Steel premiered Jan. 19, 2010 at the American University in Washington, DC (Jaqueline Pollauf, harp and Noah Getz, alto sax). It was also performed on at Catholic University in Washington, DC (Nov. 12, 2010), Lilypad, Boston (Apr. 19, 2011), and University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Oct. 26, 2018).

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.

 A version was composed for flute and piano in 2019, based on the original version written for alto saxophone and harp.

 Click here to view the score.

Silk and Steel for flute and harp (2022) evokes qualities of both the delicacy and power that the flute and harp can project. The piece is also a version of the original work for alto sax and harp.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for mezzo soprano and piano

ca. 5'05"

The text of Dudele is attributed to Reb Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (1740–1809) who was a prominent Chasidic rabbi in what is present- day Ukraine. The Chasidic sect of Judaism emphasizes joy, music, and mystical union with God. Dudeleh is a beloved Yiddish poem. Yiddish is strongly related to medieval German with a great deal of Hebrew, and spoken widely by Eastern European Jews and now in Chasidic communities throughout the world as well as by secular Jews. Du is the familiar form of ‘you’ and Dudele is an affectionate intensification of the pronoun, that would be used with a beloved spouse, child or friend – here it affirms the Reb’s intense connection to God.

I set the poem/prayer with a Klezmer feel. While most of the piece is in 4/4, there are interludes using a rhythm of 3+3+2 which is heard in the doina, a Rumanian dance form with possible Middle Eastern roots, often heard in Klezmer music.

Dudele is part of a larger composition originally scored for SATB choir, harp, organ and percussion called Hallelujah. This version of Dudele was premiered at the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sedona in 2023, on the same day that Hallelujah premiered in Schermbeck, Germany.

Sonja Bruzauskas, mezzo soprano

Sandrine Erdely-Sayo, piano

Click here to view the score.

Click here to watch a performance of the piece.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for flute and percussion

ca. 9'07"

hag riding was originally composed for the Umbilicus Quartet, a percussion quartet. It is based on two poems by Lucille Clifton, the late and highly honored poet, who spent part of her career in Maryland. Her fierce art is captured with precision in these works. The poem “hag riding” celebrates a woman’s joyous power. The second poem, “auction street,” evokes the horror of slave auctions, the auction block and “thousands of fathers and mothers led in a coffle to the block.” Complex polyrhythms are a feature of the work. I am grateful to Tom Goldstein for his encouragement and pleasurable hours spent exploring the extensive resources of Umbilicus.

Umbilicus Percussion Quartet premiered the original version of the piece at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Livewire Festival 4, 2013, and played it at The Parlor (Baltimore), also in 2013 and again in 2018 at the Livewire Festival 9 at UMBC.

Click here to view the score for percussion and flute.

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording that is for percussion only.

Click here to download all performnce materials.

Anna Rubin

for solo piano

For the Love of Bees is a six-part suite. It was originally composed for Dr. Margaret Lucia in a solo piano version with four parts in 2010. I expanded the piece in 2019 at the request of the director of the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sandrine Erdely-Sayo as well as adding a spoken narrative in another version. The idea for the piece was generated by my growing awareness of honeybee hive die-offs because of Colony Collapse Disorder. As I learned more about this problem, including interviewing bee specialists at the US Department of Agriculture, I also learned more about bees’ social behavior, other bee species, and their critical role as pollinators.

For each section, I used some of the striking characteristics of bees as a 'natural' metaphor along with a particular pianistic technical challenge in the tradition of the etude. In turn, each section explores a particular compositional/harmonic issue. In various sections, I was also responding to the piano compositions of Debussy, Chopin, Bartok, Messaien, and the great Cuban jazz pianist, Chucho Valdés.

"Swarms" uses rapidly iterated clusters of 3-7 notes — a sort of ‘megatrill’ — in a variety of textures in a free atonal musical language. "Sting" is based on rapidly executed lines in step-wise motion contrasted with 'stinging' dyads and rapid ostinati; the perfect 4th is the core interval. “Honey Queen” is based on slow 6-9 note sustained chords with combinations of 2nds, 4ths, 7ths, all in a protracted sense of unresolved stasis. “Myth of the Assassin Bees” is a fast-pulsed and syncopated exploration of virtuosic cross-hand technique with jazz-influenced chords. “Solitary” is a romantic and lyrical exercise in chromatic quasi-tonal harmony. "Ode to Bees and Their Keepers" takes the symmetry of the hive as a metaphor for expanding and contracting figures. It begins at the center of the instrument. These figures expand outward, contract and move variously through the range of the keyboard until the entire range of the instrument is sounding. This last section incorporates echoes of earlier sections — the megatrills of "Swarms," lush chords of “Honey Queen” and “Solitary,” and cross-hand technique of “Myth of the Assassin Bees.”

This piece was premiered by Dr. Margaret Lucia in 2010 at both the University of Maryland Baltimore County and Heidelberg College. She has performed this at multiple conferences and festivals including the International Alliance for Women in Music Conference (Flagstaff, 2011); College Music Society Symposium, Cambridge (2013); Pennsylvania Women Composers Festival (2014); Conservatorio Teresa Berganza (part of their Semana Cultural, 2017); Conservatorio Adolfo Salazar, Madrid (2017); Conservatori Superior de Musica de les Illes Balears, Palma Majorca (2017); Universidad de Salamanca, Festival Internacional de Primavera (2017); Centro Cultural de Nicholás Samerón (2017); Sala Manuel De Falla, Conservatorio Real de Madrid (2019); Auditorio de Galicia - Santiago de Compostela (2017); and Wunderkammer - Villa Bernasconi, Cernobbio (2019). Sections of the piece have also been performed in Baltimore at the Baltimore Composers Forum (2018) by Bonghee Lee.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for narrator and piano

ca. 21'58"

For the Love of Bees is a six-part suite. It was originally composed for Dr. Margaret Lucia in a solo piano version with four parts in 2010. I expanded the piece in 2019 at the request of the director of the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sandrine Erdely-Sayo as well as adding a spoken narrative. The idea for the piece was generated by my growing awareness of honeybee hive die-offs because of Colony Collapse Disorder. As I learned more about this problem, including interviewing bee specialists at the US Department of Agriculture, I also learned more about bees’ social behavior, other bee species, and their critical role as pollinators.

For each section, I used some of the striking characteristics of bees as a 'natural' metaphor along with a particular pianistic technical challenge in the tradition of the etude. In turn, each section explores a particular compositional/harmonic issue. In various sections, I was also responding to the piano compositions of Debussy, Chopin, Bartok, Messaien, and the great Cuban jazz pianist, Chucho Valdés.

"Swarms" uses rapidly iterated clusters of 3-7 notes — a sort of ‘megatrill’ — in a variety of textures in a free atonal musical language. "Sting" is based on rapidly executed lines in step-wise motion contrasted with 'stinging' dyads and rapid ostinati; the perfect 4th is the core interval. “Honey Queen” is based on slow 6-9 note sustained chords with combinations of 2nds, 4ths, 7ths, all in a protracted sense of unresolved stasis. “Myth of the Assassin Bees” is a fast-pulsed and syncopated exploration of virtuosic cross-hand technique with jazz-influenced chords. “Solitary” is a romantic and lyrical exercise in chromatic quasi-tonal harmony.  "Ode to Bees and Their Keepers" takes the symmetry of the hive as a metaphor for expanding and contracting figures. It begins at the center of the instrument. These figures expand outward, contract and move variously through the range of the keyboard until the entire range of the instrument is sounding. This last section incorporates echoes of earlier sections — the megatrills of "Swarms," lush chords of “Honey Queen” and “Solitary," and cross-hand technique of “Myth of the Assassin Bees.”

This version of the piece premiered at the Piano on the Rocks Festival in 2019. Other performances of the complete suite have occurred at the University of the Andes (2020) and at the Richmond Library in Philadelphia under the sponsorship of Drexel University and the library, which has an active beehive. Sections of the piece have also been performed in Baltimore (Baltimore Composers Forum) and the Philadelphia Ethical Society.

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for C flute and alto flute

Consulting the Oracle was originally composed in 2013 and was the winning work at the 2013 Competition hosted by the Women Composers Conference of Hartford. It was premiered there by the Dahlia Duo, Mary Matthews and Melissa Wertheimer. The work entails movement and the added twist of the performers wearing ankle bells.

A variety of flute timbres and extended techniques are using in this lyrical and whimsical work. I always held in mind the image of two women performing an alchemy of sound and magic to divine the future and their delight in making music together. Various scales are used in the piece with strong pitch centers anchoring the melody.

The piece has been performed several times including at the Broomfield Auditorium, Broomfield, CO, (2016), at the Mid Atlantic Flute Convention, Reston, VA (2016), Dairy Center for the Performing Arts, Boulder (2016).

Click here to view the score.

Click here to see a video excerpt.

Anna Rubin

for mezzo soprano, piano, and fixed media

ca. 14'56"

Remembering is a lyrical and evocative meditation on the horrors of World War II. It is in three major sections. The two outer sections are accompanied by electronic sounds. The first part is dominated by word fragments which are gradually revealed to be names of concentration camps and other sites of horror. The middle section is without electronic sounds and is a setting of the Jewish prayer for the dead, the Kaddish and is in the original Hebrew. The last section again features a collage of vocal sounds as a background for the soloist and brings a gentle resolution to the work.

The work has been recorded on NEUMA Records with the late Judith Kellock, mezzo soprano, and Karl Paulnack.It has been performed many times including performances at the SEAMUS Festival of Electroacoustic Music (1996), Oberlin College (2000), University of Maryland Baltimore County (2010), and the Piano on the Rocks Festival, Sedona (2021).

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for concert wind ensemble

ca. 9'28"

Chiaroscuro was commissioned by Dr. Brian Kaufman, director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Wind Ensemble in 2016. The term 'chiaroscuro' is a term used in painting to refer to the dramatic treatment of light and shade. I exploit the many colors of wind, brass, percussion and piano to contrast and blend with each other. The piano in particular adds a brilliant coloristic component. The piece is highly rhythmic and builds to a rollicking climax where the full power of the brass section holds sway. The surprise ending is gentle, highlighting the upper winds.

The piece is recorded on Albany Records entitled Filtering, published in 2020.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for soprano, violin, and fixed media

ca. 8'00"

This work is based on excerpts from Canadian poet Di Brandt’s poem, Interspecies Communication. The poem celebrates the life of bees with its lyrical language while pointing to the dangers pesticides pose to their survival. The musical setting of the poem emphasizes a playful and sensuous quality of the poem, both for voice and violin and the electronic evocation of swarms and honey-making.

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.

Click here to download performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for amplified cello and fixed media

ca. 10'54"

Beekeepers Caroline and Jeff Crooks are small-scale beekeepers in Maryland who graciously allowed me to record their stories about beekeeping – as well as their bees. Their recorded voices are blended with ambient and computer-generated sound and blended with live cello. This sonic ‘portrait’ takes the listener into the world of a backyard apiary, and is part of a series of pieces commissioned by cellist Madeleine Shapiro dealing with the environment. The cellist’s part is both lyrical and percussive, allowing the performer to explore a variety of textures and colors available on the instrument.

This piece has been performed at such venues as The Tank (NYC, 2011), Electroacousic Music Festival, Conservatory of Music of Brooklyn College (2013), SEAMUS Conference, Wesleyan University (2014), and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (2018).

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording by Michal Schmidt.

Click here to download performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for actor and two pianos

Powehi for actor and two pianists (two pianos) was commissioned by the Piano on the Rocks Festival in 2019. We decided jointly that the piece would be about black holes, which fascinate both director/pianist Sandrine Erdely-Sayo and myself. "Powehi" is the name of a black hole dwelling at the center of a supergiant galaxy in the constellation Virgo. In 2019, this black hole was the first ever to be photographed. Astronomers reached out to Larry Kimura, a longtime advocate and teacher of the Hawaiian language at the University of Hawaii-Hilo, to coin the name. The name is sourced from the Kumulipo, the sacred chant of creation from the aliʻi, Hawaiʻi’s chiefs. Pō is the powerful, creative darkness referred to in the chant. Wehi is the embellished adornment that would crown and aliʻi—similar to the bright ring of orange that surrounds the black hole. Therefore, Powehi stands for the creative darkness which is embellished with a crown.  As I read about Powehi and black holes in general, I created a text that explored the related concepts of gravity, dark matter, dark energy, and the mystery of black holes. I wrote the piece with the virtuosity of both Erdely-Sayo and Cynthia Raim, her colleague at the festival, in mind. The piece is cyclical and wavelike in nature, with slower, sparser material gradually building into powerful, intense peaks, and then subsiding again, only to repeat the process. The gravity section near the beginning evokes carousel-like music. The blues influence the material on dark matter.

The piece premiered at Piano on the Rocks in 2019 in Sedona and has been recorded for release in 2024.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for accordion/bayan

ca. 5'15"

Celia’s Samovar was written for the accordionist/bayan player, Stas Venglevski, in 2012. I was inspired by a relative’s beautiful silver samovar, which her family had brought to the US in the early 1900s when they emigrated from Russia. Her vivid stories of the dangerous journey her family undertook will always remain with me. The piece is a kind of fantasy incorporating several extended techniques for the player which Mr. Venglevski demonstrated to me. There are quasi improvisational sections as well.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

 for solo piano

ca. 2'00"

This short piece is part of the ‘Diabelli Recomposed’ project conceived by Claudia Bigos. Fifty worldwide composers participated in composing variations on the famous tune made famous by Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Furore Verlag (Germany) has published this piece in “Diabelli Recomposed,” Edition 10413.

Ludwig Dreams of Igor is a whimsical smash-up of well-known fragments of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps with the opening tune of the Diabelli Variations. The famous bi-tonalism of Le Sacre pervades the variation while melodic fragments of each composer are intertwined. The shared love of bombast cements their true brotherhood.

The piece premiered as part of a grand performance of all fifty pieces at the Hanover Music Academy in 2023.

Click here to view the score.

Click here to watch a performance (YouTube; go to 2:12:23).

Click here to download all performance materials.

Anna Rubin

for orchestra and optional fixed media/backing soundtrack

This orchestra piece was a winner of the National Orchestral Association competition and was  performed under the baton of Jorge Mester at Carnegie Hall in 1989. Textural variety is a strong feature of the piece with contrasting wind, string and brass passages. The mood of the piece is poignant and was inspired by the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. My dear friend, composer Violeta Dinescu, told me much about the repression of his regime and the great hopes of the Romanian people. But his downfall did not usher in the freedom and prosperity promised. The piece premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1993 under the direction of Jorge Mester.

Click here to view the score and listen to a recording.

Anna Rubin

for soprano, flute, oboe, Bb clarinet, bassoon, horn in F, piano, violin, viola, violoncello, and contrabass

De Nacht was written while I was studying in Amsterdam with Ton de Leeuw in 1983. I composed it for a competion run by the Delta Ensemble and was awarded first prize. I assembled the text, which is an impressionistic collage drawn from several sources including Near Eastern mythology and Malcolm’s X’s own life. Words from several languages are used. I was very influenced by the mythological works of Joseph Campbell and his concept of the hero’s journey. The piece is in two broad sections. Melodic fragments are set against fast, pizzicato and staccato accompanimental figures in the first part. It builds to a dramatic climax and is followed by a serene closing section which is a setting of a Hawaaian creation song.

At a time when the earth was hot,

At a time when the heavens turned about,

At a time when the sun was darkened to cause the moon to shine,

The slime, the source of the earth, the source of the night, that made the night,

Intense darkness! The deep darkness, the darkness of the sun, darkness of the night, the night gives birth.

The piece premiered at The Icebreaker (Het Ijsbreker), Amsterdam, in 1983 was performed several times after by the ensemble.

Click here to view the score.

Anna Rubin

for three violas

Viola à Tre was commissioned by the New York State Council on the Arts 1988. Violist Marlow Fisher initiated the project while he was living in New York City. The rich colors of the instrument provided inspiration for this work which contrasts contrapuntal with chordal sections. The musical language is flexible – at times atonal, modal, and quasi-tonal.

The piece premiered at the Dia Foundation in New York City in 1989.

Click here to view the score.

Anna Rubin

for soprano recorder, alto recorder, tenor recorder, ankle bells, and tambourines

ca. 5'45"

Banish Gloom! was commissioned by virtuoso recorder player Maria Loos. The piece requires the player to move around the stage and employ contemporary extended or unusual techniques of sound production. Ms. Loos was generous with her time and gave me many wonderful ideas. The piece begins in a melancholy mood and gradually becomes wilder and more joyous.

Banish Gloom! premiered at the Festival of Women Composers, Indiana University of PA, in 2008.

Click here to view the score and listen to the recording.