The Composer: An Introduction

What many don’t realize is that Zappa’s first ever musical dream was to write “serious” music. Music which he found in the repertoires of his classical influences, such as Stravinsky. He dreamed of having his compositions performed by orchestras, but as he found during his first meeting, around the age of seventeen, with the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra – he had a lot to learn.

With no formal musical training Zappa had a lot to prove before he would be taken seriously. As he admitted himself, he was extremely naïve at the start of his musical career and would write sheet music that simply looked pretty. If the notes on the page were aesthetically pleasing, Frank was happy. The only problem was he didn’t know what the composition would sound like when played.

Through the years, as we will see in later posts, he honed his craft (and learned what different notes would potentially sound like!) and was able to write beautiful compositions. However, by then, his social critiques were brewing inside him, ready to explode and tell the people of the world exactly what was wrong with them.

Zappa opted to take a drastic turn in his musical career path and chose to become an unconventional composer, offering music that was always unexpected but, with time, increasingly welcome.