Met him in '76 while a hotel bellboy. He came into the dining room for breakfast wearing a pink chiffon bathrobe and children's slippers, one with a felt Mickey Mouse head, the other of Donald Duck, ordered a pitcher of orange juice and a dozen apples.
I believe this is the work of copyist who was paid to reduce Zappa's original score down to a conductor's study score. The clefs and time signatures are written in a much different style that doesn't appear on any of the Zappa manuscripts I've seen. Actually the style of everything is quite different... Zappa's style is even more pristine than this, if you can believe it.
Yes! Zappa's score engraving is beautiful - but this is not Zappa's handwriting, watch the Approximate clip on youtube, his writing is far more angular and verticle. He also drew postcards when he worked in advertising when he was young, you can google them.
Seems to depend on who you talk to. Zappa seemed to be polarizing in everything he did. I can see from RU-vid videos many people doing analysis of his orchestral music. So there are people and musicians taking him seriously as a composer. I also noticed that Zappa seems to have more cultural capital among Europeans. I am not going to take a stab at it as to why.
@@delpage1 When I say underrated I guess I am saying that Zappa is not considered alongside all the classical cats and so on in terms of merit even though he seemed to have been friendly with the Avant-Gardists. A lot of the rating of artists is sociologically driven rather than art object driven; it's about milieus and crowds. as well as socially enforced taxonomies. So Zappa coming out of the rock world would be enough to make him always already "underrated" in a way. The only exception to this, I would predict, is those alternative rockers or rockers who have always been involved with classical and jazz in a more thorough way; they would probably dig Zappa more, but precisely because of their background. That is, their form of rock music would be already unusual in terms of the field, making them more open minded and hearing music in a less conformist way? I'm just thinking out loud here.
@@dandiacal I agree. As a rocker he is already an outsider. But on the other hand, how many rockers get the endorsement of Boulez. Another thing I've noticed is that his orchestral music is performed more in Europe than the U.S. But yeah being a rocker makes him and outsider. I read an interview where John Adams (American) busts his chops and refers to him as this "guy from rock n roll." It's a shame Zappa passed away so young because it looks like specialty orchestras like Ensemble Modern (also European) were interested in performing his music. Zappa had always said he is "trying to work his way back to Webern," meaning composing is where he started and that's where he wanted to land. He was getting there at the end. Orchestras were showing an interest in commissioning his work as opposed to "bribing the LSO" to perform his works. Life.
Pierre Boulez commissioned him for The Perfect Stranger. He was friend's with Slonimsky and many others in the avant-guard leaning classical circles. I think had his fans during his life. As for being "underrated", it's probably true today as it was then. The issue with his compositions is that although there is "complexity," there is also a lot of lack in other areas of composition. (He's a bit lop-sided, especially when it comes to true counterpoint.) But hey... who cares? It's still great music.
@@Tyrell_Corp2019 it makes sense that it is both great music and also lopsided. He seemed to have tremendous talent but not much in the way of formal education. An outsized talent with an undersized pedigree. He studied with Karl Kohn who had a connection to Boulez while Zappa was a young man in California. He was accepted to the Peabody Conservatory but in keeping with his personality, he declined because of what I suspect was a distrust of academia. Whatever the composer's talent is, Zappa had it. It was refined through his own sensibilities and not through those of our better academic institutions. So you get what you get sometimes for better and sometimes not. I just know I have been fascinated by it more than I like it for the past forty years and I keep listening and trying to understand more because for all its blemishes, there is something to learn in his compositions too I think .
When I was a kid I would listen to the version on King Kong Ponty plays Zappa. SWR brings so much out of the music that isn't present in that recording which probably more of a reflection of rehearsal time I am guessing. For even the most competent musicians, I would imagine there are things here that require repetition in practice both individually and as a unit.... hence the name I suppose. Revised music for low budget orchestra.
is it classical? is it jazz? is it just silly circus improv? why all the time changes? "FASTER" !!! ... Personally, I LOVE Zappa. I find people either love him or hate him. But whichever -- Zappa's voice is SO distinguishable. The second you hear one of his pieces, you know it's him immediately. That's HARD to do in this "delta" of CCM music the past ~70 years.....
Kind of like with Gershwin, Ives and some of Stravinsky's later works, it straddles the line between classical and jazz in areas but as a whole it's just modern classical.
@@jasonodonnell6444 That's where I think FZ belongs: not as a peer of Stravinsky, Ives, or Varese, but one of Ellington, Mingus, Sun Ra, and Henry Threadgill. He's a great jazz composer who only occasionally wrote jazz, couldn't really play the music (though he could play the hell out of his own small corner of it), and liked to crack jokes about it.
thanks for posting. I wrote "Threnody for Frank Zappa" Google say jt productions " zappa beefheart" or " she dances in the wind " Thanks again. for all the great postings
Absolutely love this song, and am thankful to watch the music with it! I'm bummed the part of the song where, in the original an acoustic guitar solo is orchestrated for horns doesn't have the sheet music. However, great video!
The one you're referring is not the original Low Budget - this piece was first recorded in 1969 for King Kong: Jean Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa and does not include that bit that you mentioned. That was likely added later when he re-recorded it with the guitar in place of the violin
Is this a re-working of "Music for Electric Violin and Low-Budget Orchestra" which Zappa composed for the album "King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa"? I don't recall it sounding like this but it's been a while. If I recall Leonard Feather's liner notes correctly, the title was a reaction to certain constraints Pacific Records was putting on Zappa's artistic vision.
Hmm, a condensed score few conductors would agree to conduct to. I assume Zappa wrote out the full score later. So-called "low budget" orchestras may have existed in the 60s & 70s, but no more! And when I think "low budget" I think amateur musicians who wouldn't be capable of performing a work like this.
This is certainly not meant to be used to conduct to - and I think he's being facetious by using the phrase 'low budget' - it's quite clear the extreme virtuosity that is required to play the music!
@@GNGianopoulos I heard some story where instead of having the normal amount of violin players, horn players, etc he just had one of each in the studio. Don't know what he did live for the song
I play in a amateur community orchestra where the skill level and musicianship are up to this standard. There are some extremely talented, gifted musicians who find themselves teaching or working as engineers or some other day job to pay the bills, but have maintained their skills.
Everyone is missing the point - he's not making some statement about amateur musicians or community orchestras. You're just inferring this for whatever reason, but it's pretty clearly just a joke - he was just some poor rock guitarist trying to write symphonic music and this is sort-of motley crew that he can cobble together on his modest financial situation.
sounds like music from Roxy & Elsewhere. But the Zappa band just sounds so much better! You just can't communicate the right attitude through sheet music.
![Frank Zappa - Revised Music for Low Budget Symphony Orchestra (c. 1969) [Score-Video]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
