In George Brecht’s notebook of 3 August 1959, he asked himself, “Shouldn’t scores be simply published in the newspaper, or available on printed cards or sheets of paper, to be sent to anyone?” This February 1960 letter to The Village Voice editor Daniel Wolf proposes that new music scores be published in the newspaper in order to democratize and broaden the field of experimental music. Brecht invited Wolf to test the idea with some of his own scores, which he enclosed. Indeed, experimental scores were on occasion published in newspapers in the years around 1960 to draw audiences’ attention to the visual elements of scores that would otherwise be invisible in performances.
© 2022 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
