INTRODUCTION

Music in the second half of this century has stylistically become more and more fragmentated into categories, with rock music, jazz and modern music as the main area's, having there own groups of listeners and critics. Furthermore these main sections have a lot of subdivisions. Apart from this stands the classical music from the past, that also tends to attrack a seperate group of listeners. Zappa never treated popmusic, jazz and modern music as seperate fields and his importance depends partly on his skillful combination of these three musical directions. In the year of his death (1993) he had a legacy of over fifty highly diverse CDs. The recordings comprehend the easiest love songs on "Cruising with Ruben and The Jets", many complex rock based albums, jazz albums like "The Grand Wazoo", guitar solo albums, atonal music for classical ensembles and a few verbally oriented releases as "Thingfish".
Though Frank Zappa is basically known as a rock musician, in the last ten years of his life his reputation as a composer of modern music started to increase. In 1982 and 1987 orchestral pieces performed by the London Symphony Orchestra were released on record; in 1984 this release was followed by chamber music with the Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Pierre Boulez, and in 1993 by the The Yellow Shark project, featuring the Ensemble Modern. Sections of modern music can also be found in several of Zappa's so called rock albums, sometimes performed by hired musicians (for instance the "200 Motels" album of 1971 featuring The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), sometimes performed by his own rock band (for instance "The Black Page" on "Zappa in New York", 1976).
Because of the diversity of his albums it becomes difficult to give Zappa a suitable place in music history and also to write about his music with a clear chapter division treating individual aspects. Examples of one aspect may very well be examples of another aspect at the same time. For this site I have chosen to follow Zappa's career historically and to comment upon several technical aspects along the way. The following order of the subjects may be arbitrary, but I think it becomes better readable this way than by summing up technical elements. The historical facts are treated only briefly, because a lot of material has already been published on this subject. As it comes to musical analysis a study in German language by Wolfgang Ludwig should be mentioned, that has appeared in 1992. Of this study a summary is included. Zappa himself doesn't make it easy for us to get a good picture of his musical intentions in his interviews. Because his albums only occasionally became hits, Zappa sought some compensation for this in a good sense for publicity with a never ending series of humoristically-provoking remarks. He repeatedly contradicted himself and it would be a mistake to take everything he has said too seriously. The estimation of Zappa's CDs has still to begin. It is often heard that his output differs a lot in quality, so this might appear to be true. But when some critic is commenting upon the "good and bad" CDs, it's each time about different CDs, so it says more about personal preferences than about a starting concensus. Personally I think they differ in function.