Sheet Music & Scores
Music written to be performed
These entries present a selection of works from the catalog, organized by ensemble. The complete catalog, including all available scores, is in the Store.
Orchestra & Large Ensemble
Symphony No. 1
Full Orchestra · 45 minutes · Advanced
A four-movement work that moves from the nervous uncertainty of its opening gestures to a finale that, as Pizzicato wrote, makes it "hard to suppress a smile." Recorded by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for Navona Records, 2024.
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Narrator & Orchestra · 40 minutes · Advanced
This work sets Coleridge's supernatural sea narrative for narrator and full orchestra. The music functions simultaneously as ocean, as psychological weather, and as supernatural presence alongside the narrator. WTJU Public Radio described it as music that "perfectly captures that concept of unease and unspoken danger." 2024 Global Music Awards Silver Medal.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Full Orchestra · 8 minutes · Advanced
A tone poem after Tennyson's memorial poem. The heavy hoofbeats of the cavalry form the musical backbone as the orchestral narrative unfolds, from the valiant charge through the great clash of forces to a solemn call of remembrance for the fallen.
Danube Journey
Full Orchestra · 8 minutes · Advanced
A vivid musical travelogue from Budapest to Passau along the Danube River. Seven short interconnected sections each evoke a city or landscape along the route: Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Göttweig Abbey, Český Krumlov, and Passau, culminating in a grand chorale at the rivers' confluence.
Phi
Full Orchestra · 8 minutes · Advanced
From the time of the ancient world, human civilization has celebrated the special mathematical ratio called The Golden Proportion. Mathematicians use the greek symbol Phi to indicate this special number. Scientists have discovered the presence of this ratio throughout the natural world and it is an unavoidable part of being alive. This work unfolds, like the shell of a nautilus, with each section adding to the prior music in perfect proportion.
Steampunk Serenade
String Orchestra · 25 minutes · Advanced
Written in the tradition of 19th century string serenades, this five-movement work was composed in direct conversation with Dvorak's Serenade for Strings of 1875. As I wrote at the time of its premiere: "Like his work, my own had five distinct parts, called movements, that like Acts in a play stand as separate elements but must be heard together to deliver the whole."
Movements: I. A Steam-powered Machine · II. Slightly Tipsy · III. Over the Next Ridge · IV. Sunset Glow in Prairie Grass · V. Games of the Wind
In August 2026, CPR Classical aired the opening movement, A Steam-powered Machine, on Colorado Spotlight.
Terra, the Bringer of Life
Full Orchestra · 8 minutes · Advanced
A companion work to Gustav Holst’s celebrated work, The Planets, this rounds out the known planets of 1917 with our homeworld. Like the greater work which inspired it, Terra uses the Latin name for our planet as it celebrates what makes Earth different than all the rest of our solar system, life. In seven parts (after a certain fashion), this work brings echoes of our weekly cycle with a 7/8 meter throughout. See if you can figure out what the seventh section of this work is.
Adventure at Sea
Full Orchestra · 6 minutes · Advanced
Pure adventure, this piece opens with the rough chant of sailors working the rigging of a vessel on its way to sea. The simplicity of their vigorous sea chanty yields as the wind picks up and the ship is pushing into adventure. Fog and mist await as the ship enters uncertain gloom before the opening chanty returns with the ship rising and surging on the waves of a storm-riled ocean.
Panchromatica
Full Orchestra · 8 minutes · Advanced
This work was a study in blending the orchestral palettes of winds, brass, strings, and percussion. After an introduction filled with breathless waiting and expectation, the primary melody leaps out from a pair of woody oboes. Each section gets a turn to introduce itself with a unique theme. After this, the painter begins to mix the colors and melodies with layers of musical texture. Listen closely to hear how all the sections layer over each other like pigments in an oil painting.
Innocence
Full Orchestra · 8 minutes · Intermediate
This work celebrates the simplicity of melody. Opening with a flourish of wonder in the harp, the main theme emerges like the wonder of a child beholding the richness of the world. There are shadows and bright sunshine and the individual personalities of the woodwind instruments amble across the stage of a child’s encounters with the adults who fill his life.
Soma/Pneuma
Full Orchestra · Advanced
From Soma (gr. Body) and Pneuma (gr. Soul). This piece imagines the working of a modern computer working through the parsing of natural language. As the buffers clear with each fanfare, the incessant drive of digitized words are parsed. Each strike of percussion represent the mechanistic process of representing language while the pitched instruments soar above it painting in sound the meaning that the digital process cannot grasp.
The Comedian’s Waltz
Violin & Orchestra · 9 minutes · Advanced
From the opening notes of ‘The Comedian’s Waltz’ you hear a wordless storyteller in a voice of wood and string. The story begins in the inner quiet of the Comedian, the one who has learned to feed upon the laughter of others as nourishment for a dark and disaffected heart. Alone, and full of craving for connection, the Comedian rises from the void inside to beguile and charm the audience.
Notturno
String Orchestra & Harp · 8 minutes · Advanced
An evening love song. Simple in outline and beautiful in proportion, it is richer than it first appears because of a quality of perturbation running beneath the surface: the accompaniment is never quite settled, even when the melody is. Night thickens as the piece progresses.
Chamber Music
Souvenirs for Piano Quintet
Piano Quintet · 4 movements · 27 minutes · Advanced
Four movements drawn from four different moments in time. Each one is a souvenir of a moment with corresponding musical echoes from the time. Parchment, Daguerreotype, Wristwatch, Facemask
Piano Quintet in c-minor
Piano Quintet · 4 movements · 33 minutes · Advanced
Four movements, each a musical portrait of a universal human feeling. Agitation: a bubbling cauldron of tension and passion. Ennui: a melancholy boredom whose weight becomes unbearable. Wonder: an awe-filled contemplation of the night sky. Exuberance: the warmth of spring after the gloom of winter.
Transfigured Night
Violin and Piano · 8 minutes · Advanced
This work is a musical analog to Vincent Van Gogh’s famous painting ‘Starry Night’. In that painting, the night sky erupts in whorls and gestures that belie the apparent quietude of the evening sky. Like Van Gogh’s work, this piece is a serenade to the penetration of reality by wonder and beauty, infused with human imagination. Written for Paul Barnes and Teimuraz Janikashvili, and premiered at the Kalos Arts Foundation 2025 Beauty Through Faith Conference.
Before the Chill of Winter
Piano Quartet · 5 minutes · Intermediate
I wrote this piece for a short film about a couple in the later years of marriage. It is a look back to warmer days from the place of metaphorical winter. Recorded on A Winter Journal (2023) by Rita Váray, Dávid Pintér, Péter Tornyai, and Orsolya Mód.
Ballade
Clarinet & Piano · 8 minutes · Advanced
This piece is a duet between a clarinet and piano. The rolling accompaniment of the piano moves from foreground to background while the clarinet searches and longs through a lyrical tale. The tale is abstract but full of adventures that feature the full timbral range of the clarinet from its dark-hued lowest register (chalumeau) through its clear middle voice (clarion) and up into its penetrating upper range (altissimo).
Tears
Flute, Clarinet & String Quartet · 6 minutes · Advanced
From the fear and intimacy of Death, to the meditation on the loss of the beloved, ‘Tears’ is a musical weeping. Not an uncontrollable wailing. It is the quiet, resigned weeping that comes in the face of inexorable loss. The beloved will be gone, never to be heard with human ears. Youth flees leaving an ever increasing enfeeblement in the wake of each passing hour. Change, loss…Tears.
An Elegant Moment
Piano four hands · 4 minutes
A waltz for one piano, four hands. This is a fanciful showpiece that makes an excellent encore or a charming opener for a recital.
Fantasia for Viola (or Cello) and Piano
Viola or cello, piano · 8 minutes · Advanced
This work opens with an angular and dissonant exploration of the full range of the viola or cello from its lowest C string upwards. After this orientation, the piano joins for a freeform journey through multiple themes and textures.
Solo Piano
Piano Sonata in Three Acts
Solo Piano · 3 movements · 28 minutes · Virtuoso
Three movements of considerable range, composed for and recorded by pianist Benjamin Harding using the same microphone setup as engineers for Vladimir Horowitz's recordings. Harding's own description: "fresh, crafted with extreme precision, and inviting."
Pilgrim’s Progress
Solo Piano · 16 movements · 30 minutes · Advanced
Sixteen vignettes following Bunyan's allegorical Pilgrim from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Composed for a mobile application and organized as a journey, each short piece depicts a specific moment from the narrative. Individual movements may be programmed separately.
Movements: Prologue, The City of Destruction, The Slough of Despond, Mr. Legality's House, The Wicket Gate, The Interpreter's House, At the Cross, Palace Beautiful, Apollyon, The Narrow Road, Vanity Fair, The Giant Despair, The Delectable Mountains, The Shining One, The River of Death, The Celestial City.
Toccata
Solo Piano · 5 minutes · Advanced
True to the spirit of the style, this virtuosic work is built upon a variety of techniques and ways that pianists touch the keyboard (toccare, Italian “to touch”). It starts with a tonally ambiguous blur between Eb and D that works through the whole composition as the player moves throughout the keyboard. This work will challenge you to engage the full range of the instrument in pitch, dynamics, rhythm, and texture.
Benjamin Harding performed the Toccata at the 2026 American Liszt Festival. Below, Benjamin and I talk through the work as he rehearses it.
Three Rags
Solo Piano · 3 rags · 15 minutes · Intermediate
This collection grew from a single piece that I composed for a relative, the late Dr. James Peterson who played banjo and toured with a ragtime band when he was young. The first work, Jimmy’s Shimmy, was a nod to his love of ragtime style and as a pianist the only right place to begin such an enterprise was the wonderful music of Scott Joplin.
Vocal & ChorAL
Wedding Prayer
String quartet / SATB upon request · 5 minutes · Intermediate/Advanced
Originally composed for four voices at the composer's wedding ceremony, this work weaves flowing instrumental-style lines on sustained vowels while one or two voices carry the text. It is available in both the original SATB vocal setting and the string quartet arrangement recorded on Conversations (Octave Records, 2023). The original a cappella vocal quartet is available upon request via email to salutations@gustavhoyer.com
Abide With Me
Soprano & Orchestra · 8 minutes · Advanced
A setting for soprano and orchestra of Henry Lyte's text, written in the final hours of his life. The music moves from quiet apprehension through prayer and wrestling to a radiant conclusion.
Miserere
SATB a cappella · 5 minutes · Intermediate
A powerful plea for mercy by unaccompanied choir makes this piece a strong companion for liturgical use in penitential seasons and Holy Week.
Hymphony
SSAATTBB a cappella · 6 movements · 30 minutes · Advanced
This work marries orchestral techniques and textures with the rich colors of an a cappella vocal ensemble, inspired by the expressive poetry of the classic hymn Praise to the Lord. It is acceptable to program individual movements if desired.
Commissions & Custom Works
Interested in commissioning a new work?
Gustav Hoyer is available for commissions across all ensemble types, from solo recital works to large-scale orchestral premieres. Contact Gustav to discuss your project.