In one sense, seeing Frank Zappa put out a classical disc
\nfeaturing works from an 18th Century Italian composer who shared a
\ncommon name shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. After all, this
\ncame at the tail end of a period in Zappa’s career that found him
\ndoing the most experimentation with classical music than any other
\ntime. In another sense, anyone picking up a Zappa album expecting
\nto hear his raunch-laden rock would be in for a major surprise with
\nthis disc.<\/p>\n
Another disc in which Zappa was given the opportunity to
\nexperiment with the Synclavier, this disc proves to be surprisingly
\nentertaining, if not a little tedious near the end. Like many of
\nZappa’s rock-oriented works, the lack of variety in style tends to
\nbe the Achilles’ heel for this disc, though it is hardly a death
\nblow.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting to me, listening to this disc in 2005, how much
\nI hear an influence it seemed to have on a series like “Baby
\nEinstein,” in which classical music is synthesized for little ears.
\n(This disc was compared to Wendy Carlos’s
\nSwitched-On Bach<\/i> by All-Music Guide – I disagree only in
\nthat this is less bombastic.) This doesn’t mean that the music of
\none Francesco Zappa is dumbed down for the listening audience. If
\nanything, Frank Zappa lovingly presents selections from a composer
\nwho would otherwise have been possibly lost forever to the annals
\nof time. I can’t say that this music is outstanding in terms of
\nother composers of the Baroque period, but it does hold up well on
\nits own.<\/p>\n
Two unique pieces are presented on
\nFrancesco Zappa<\/i>, “Opus I” and “Opus IV,” each one divided
\ninto its unique movements that – not unlike a modern-day composer’s
\nalbums – seemed to naturally segue into one another. While I can’t
\nsay that the Synclavier necessarily does justice to the
\ninstrumentation of the original pieces – such a comparison would
\nonly be possible if these pieces were fully orchestrated – it does
\nprovide a light-hearted peppiness to the music, and that is not
\nmeant as a slight.<\/p>\n
Yet as intriguing as this collection is, especially to the
\nnovice classical music fan such as myself,
\nFrancesco Zappa<\/i> simply runs out of gas near the end. This,
\nregrettably, has been a problem for any Zappa disc that has
\nspecifically focused on one style of music, such as
\nCruising With Ruben & The Jets<\/i>. I don’t know what could
\nhave been done to improve on this, nor do I even think that
\nanything should have been added or subtracted to this disc. In
\nfact, even though my interest started to fade at the end, making
\nany sort of change to the content would almost be akin to tampering
\nwith history. (To the best of my knowledge, this is the only
\nrecorded example of Zappa the composer’s work.)<\/p>\n
\nFrancesco Zappa<\/i> is a strange yet intriguingly pleasant
\naddition to Zappa’s vast discography, even if most people didn’t
\nget the point back in 1984 – or, for that matter, today. I’m
\nwilling to bet that such a disc would fit well into any classical
\nmusic fan’s collection, and could even shock some of the
\nstuffed-shirts in the classical music scene. For all of the
\nsophomoric humor Zappa was involved in, this is a very mature
\neffort.<\/p>\n
2005 Christopher Thelen and “The Daily Vault.” All rights
\nreserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without
\nwritten permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of the
\nZappa Family Trust \/ record label, and is used for informational
\npurposes only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27198,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5625],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-38544","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-frank-zappa","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38544"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}