SOURCE: Music of the Avant Garde Collection

A complete eleven-issue run of one of the greatest publications to emerge from the mid-century experimental music scene.

• Sold as a set of 11 numbers in 10 volumes.
• Davis and Sacramento CA: Composer and Performer Edition, 1967-1973.
• Printed offset throughout on various paper stocks, with numerous custom elements: die-cut and folded sheets, glassine inserts and a variety of tipped-in items.
• Bound in the original spiral-bound pictorial wrappers all, issues 7/8 printed tete beche. 

Elaborately produced and edited by Larry Austin (UC-Davis instructor and director of its New Music Ensemble), SOURCE aimed not only to document the experimental music scene that centered primarily on the West Coast (Mills College, etc.), but to expand the very idea of the musical score: "Our idea of a 'score' is broad. To us it is transcribed information about the composer's music-making process and contains a way of imparting this information to those who might recreate the composition" (Austin, issue 1). Much like frequent contributor John Cage's 1969 book Notations, SOURCE argued in part that the score should be viewed as much as a visual art as a musical one. This was reflected in the magazine's production: a Dick Higgins score riddled with actual bullet holes, John Cage's "Not Wanting to Say Anything About Marcel" printed in color on glassine, and perhaps most infamously Nelson Howe's "Fur Music," which utilized actual tipped-in fur swatches and included the instruction "to focus attention on the exploration of the tactile qualities of fur, but with the added requirement that the tactile sensation be *heard*." Contributors across the run include: John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Harry Partch, David Tudor, Morton Feldman, Robert Ashley, Pauline Oliveros, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Steve Reich, Harold Budd, Lejaren Hiller, Max Neuhaus, Larry Austinm, among many others.