Jahresmagazin 2002/03

Explosive Fireball

by Hans-Jürgen Schaal

In his novel about the composer "Doctor Faustus," Thomas Mann discovered a correlation between composition and alchemy. He must have been on to something, because the young Frank Zappa was also fascinated by the incalculable possibilities of his chemistry set. He allegedly could make gun powder at the age of six. Later, he happily lighted yellow-orange fireballs and rocked his parents house with an occasional explosion. Before he blew everything completely into the air, his family moved from the northern Californian desert towards Los Angeles. And this is where he began, what Zappa calls, the second phase of his scientific career: He shifted his experimental appetite to tones, sounds, and rhythms, and even these experiments led to explosions. And this is what he did for the rest of his life.

Frank Zappa is everything but a completely serious, academically trained composer. For thirty years, this man provoked and rebelled on rock stages. He was America's sharpest social satirist and most uninhibited civilian shocker. Whoever did not know anything about Zappa or his music, had at least heard about his scandals, which grew like avalanches into legendary proportions. And the worst thing about it was that he toured constantly all over the world with a horde of rock musicians and produced anarchistic stage-theater noise. Definitely not a classical musician.

And yet, even as a teenager, Zappa wanted nothing else than to become a serious composer. For his 15th birthday, he wished for a long-distance call to Greenwich Village, the artistic neigborhood of New York. According to him, that was the only place where his idol, Edgar Varèse could live. And the telephone operator actually found his phone number. The first records which he bought himself contained the music of Varèse and Stravinsky. Varèse's layers of percussion, sound-collages, electronic and tape experiments, and Stravinsky's metric caprices, bizarre march themes, abrupt tempo changes, have influenced Zappa's musical cosmos to the core. Shortly before his death, Ensemble Modern, under the direction of Peter Eötvös and with Zappa at the mixer, recorded Varèse's complete instrumental music for ensemble. The recording is still unpublished. He even wanted to seriously record the complete works of Anton Webern with his "last band," the ensemble from Germany. Unfortunately, his death came first.

What kept Zappa from having a career as a serious composers? In short, the fate of his idol Varèse. The fact that he discovered Varèse's music by chance, that a popular magazine "Look!" named a Varèse record "the worst music in the world" and described it as dissonant and terrible, that Varèse, due to resignation, did not compose fore many years: All these factors revealed enough of the truth about America's appreciation of contemporary music to the young Zappa. If he wanted his own music to be played and heard, he had to write songs for the radio, have his own band, perform on stage, play guitar himself whenever possible, and sing whenever possible. Luckily, the distinction between pop and serious music didn't mean anything to Zappa. He was fascinated by Rhythm 'n' Blues just as much as Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." And so came about the band with which he would become world famous: the Mothers of Invention, the unification of Blues guitar, Rock-theater, and the most sophisticated composition techniques.

Zappa was an avant garde rock musician and studio technician. And he never held back in his composition as well: The rhythmic, harmonic, and formal complexity, which Zappa's sound shares with either Varèse or Stravinsky, made the "Mothers" into an extreme example of pop music history. However, although Zappa was successful with this unusual mixture, he never gave up his classical ambitions. He saw himself as a composer, not as a rock-guitarist. "I have always loved making small black dots on manuscript paper. If I could earn money by just writing music, as difficult and as complicated as I wanted it to be, and if I knew, that someone would play it and all I had to do was record it, then I would gladly do that until the end of my life."

Due to this desire, Frank Zappa was always searching for collaboration with classical ensembles. As early as 1970, the Mothers played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta. The following year the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under Elgar Howarth, performed for the production of "200 Motels." In 1975, Zappa worked closely with a self-organized orchestra, under the direction of Michael Zearott, on his grand 4-LP project "Läther." In the 80s, productions with the London Symphony Orchestra under Kent Nagano and Ensemble InterContemporain under Pierre Boulez followed. Many other orchestra projects failed, many of them already in an advanced phase.

The exprienced rock-pragmatist Frank Zappa and the labor-union organized employees of an established orchestra; this is a meeting of two completely different worlds. The problems were evident: Zappa experienced - artistically, personally, and financially - disappointment in the others and his cursing tirades towards the orchestra became proverbial. Despite these failures, according to him, there are two reasons why he kept on trying: "First of all, because I want to hear the music, and secondly, because I'm stupid." In 1982, in an act of resignation and rationalization, he purchased a synclavier with which he could play the most difficult passages in every possible computer-instrumentation. "It beats any orchestra. You have total control over your idea." Zappa immediately gave up writing scores, in favor of composing directly into the computer. By the time of his death in 1993, he left behind over 500 incomplete works for synclavier.

Ensemble Modern knew what they were getting into as they contacted Frank Zappa in 1991. Both sides agreed on an initial two-week trial phase (financed by the Alte Oper Frankfurt) in "Joe's Garage," Zappa's recording studio in Los Angeles. This experience convinced Zappa that he wasn't dealing with "music officials" in this ensemble, but rather artists who were hungry for new music and new experiences. Inversely, the ensemble got to know Zappa's worki ethic and demands, which don't exactly correspond to those of the standard classical enterprise. "They were really very uncommon working techniques," confirms Roland Diry, clarinetist of Ensemble Modern. "There was a proper audition with different instrument groups. For example, every individual had to improvise over a background of keyboards, bass, and percussion. We were also confronted with unusual instruments. He was always changing the instrumentation."

Zappa expected much more than just instrumental perfection. He demanded personality, engagement, and spontaneity from the musicians, just as if they were members of a rock band. For him, the hobby-anthropologist, the two weeks in "Joe's Garage" were also a kind of psychological workshop. He let the musicians individually and collectively improvise, had them react to sounds, allowed them to recite and to act and used the results as an integral part of the combined program. Diry's commentary: "Zappa has an unbelievable talent to discover qualities in the musicians, and to use them for what they are. That was probably his greatest asset." At the end of the two-week trial period in L.A., Zappa sampled the complete range and articulation spectrum for each instrument of every ensemble member on his synclavier. In this way, even after the "Germans" left, he could continue his work with a "synthetic" Ensemble Modern.

The test phase was a success. Both sides proved that they could move and communicate well with each other. Despite all the differences, there was an obvious pleasure in the collaboration and a strong sense of connection and affinity towards each other. After all, weren't both Zappa and Ensemble Modern mavericks in an established concert business? The end of the story is well known: In September 1992, their collaborative project "The Yellow Shark" was successfully presented seven times in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Vienna. Not only did Zappa praise the ensemble ("Their commitment is breathtaking") , but also the interest, attention, and enthusiasm of the audience. After all the disappointments with classical orchestras, it was as if a life-long dream had come true at the last minute. During the CD production, his final one, Zappa worked with his personal perfectionism. He recorded the live performances with a 96-track recording truck and assembled the best cuts from all seven concerts in a mixing process which lasted several months. The result - the CD "The Yellow Shark" - is also the success of perhaps the most ingenious sound-engineer-magician of the 20th century, Frank Zappa.

However, something was left untouched. As early as the summer of 1991, during the ensemble's first test phase with Zappa, there were wishes, plans, and suggestions which could not be fit into the concert program. Many of these projects were quite vague. Pieces from the project "200 Motels" from 1971 should have been revived, as well as pieces from "Läther," Zappa's unfortunate flirt with the major label Warner Brothers in the seventies. The ensemble repeatedly requested to have Zappa's Synclavier pieces arranged for them, as if to prove to the composer that even the unplayable was actually playable. Some of these pieces, "G-Spot Tornado" from the album "Jazz From Hell," were actually tried out during the test phase, but then put aside. However, the ensemble continued to rehearse it, and eventually performed it as an encore for "The Yellow Shark." So much for unplayable.

Yet there was still something left undone which the ensemble simply could not allow to remain untouched. After all, they were somewhat Zappa's "last band," and above all, one which corrected so much of what the maestro had to endure in the classical world. They felt obligated. Furthermore, Ali N. Askin, who due to his exceptional ability as transcriber, had contributed substantially during the first meeting between Zappa and Ensemble Modern, and who was also responsible for a half-dozen arrangements for "The Yellow Shark," was still around. Afterwards, Askin continued to work with Zappa and was deeply submersed in his working habits. Until the end of 2001, on a commission from the Zappa family, he compiled written scores of Zappa's works. He knew the archives of scores and recordings, he transcribed the sound-matter of the Synclavier pieces, he could compare earlier and later versions of the pieces and restore the unnotated parts with the help of the tapes. Askin was the right man to realize a second Zappa project in the spirit and pretense of the late composer.

In 1996 there were negotiations with Gail Zappa, the composer's widow, concerning a follow-up project. This was not the first time that "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary," the whimsical music drama from the albums "Studio Tan" and "Läther," prevailed as the primary interest of the group. "Ever since the test phase of 1991, Greggery Peccary was always under discussion," reminisces Roland Diry, "as was Dental Hygiene Dilemma. Seventy percent of the program was already discussed during the test phase." The fact that the synclavier pieces, into which the Ensemble wanted to breath living humanity, should also be added, was also clear. As was the special attention to be paid to pieces from "obscure" albums such as "Läther" and "Civilization Phaze III." In this manner, the concert program gradually came together: a playful mixture of works, which - intentionally - reveals different facets of Zappa's work, which did not find space on "The Yellow Shark." And so just as Zappa personally held everything together with his moderation on "Yellow Shark," the dramatic vocal elements in the two main works were to form the inner context for the new program.

In the summer of 2000, Ensemble Modern successfully presented their second Zappa program, "Greggery Peccary & Other Persuasions," on concert stages between Amsterdam and Bologna. One week in July 2002 would be devoted to recording a CD - far in advance, because the schedule of the ensemble members must be coordinated and guest soloists need to be engaged, most importantly Omar Ebrahim and David Moss, the voices of the project. Jonathan Stockhammer, who shares his birth date with Zappa, agreed to conduct. The only unknown was: which recording label would take the project under their wing to organize and finance the recording? This is where the economics of the project clashed with the plans. With a slump in sales of up to 30 percent, there was no record label who wanted to support the project in early 2002. So the Ensemble took the responsibility upon themselves and produced the recording in the Hermann-Josef-Abs-Hall of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Norbert Ommer (Sound Director), Ali N. Askin (Arranger) and Jonathan Stockhammer (Conductor) shared the responsibilities of the Artistic Director. After all, Ensemble Modern was always a slightly different type of orchestra.

The pieces "Night School" and "Beltway Bandits" were originally composed on synclavier. In this order, they begin Zappa's album "Jazz from Hell" from the year 1986, his first serious synclavier-manifesto. (Two years earlier, he had tested the boundaries with the synclavier in a type of music-historical satire titled "Francesco Zappa.") For Zappa, "Jazz from Hell" was a real alternative to his orchestral recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra, because in contrast to them, the synclavier album was absolutely free of "wrong notes and messy passages." With these high standards, the word "Jazz" in the title, a synthetic percussion background, as well as a Grammy for best rock-instrumental album of the year, "Jazz from Hell" signaled THE crossover of genres par excellence. And herewith it was a gold mine for Ensemble Modern, who had never had the intention to discover Frank Zappa as a disabled classical musician. Despite the fact that the ensemble arrangements adapt the percussion beat of the synclavier pieces, the real, vital instrumentation completely changes the character of Zappa's music. The pieces lose any trace of improvisation and become several times more logical and definite, as well as more artistic and clearer in detail. The inconspicuous suddenly becomes interesting, and the rambunctiousness becomes structured. The ensemble brings Zappa's unlimited (thanks to the synclavier) fantasy back into a human dimension.

"A Pig With Wings" and "Put A Motor In Yourself" were also composed on the synclavier. They were originally released after Zappa's death on the album "Civilization Phaze III," a crude philosophical scenario with wide-ranging recordings of improvised speech put together by the composer. Interestingly enough, Ensemble Modern was a part of every album. In this case, Zappa used word and sound material which he had recorded during the test phase with the Ensemble in 1991. One cannot rule out the possibility that the pieces on "Civilization Phaze III," recorded in 1992, were inspired by the work with the ensemble and that they use their sound-samples. For Zappa, "A Pig With Wings" was a somewhat pathetic rubato-fantasy. He noted the scenario of it's composition as the appearance of a pig-like creature with wings, "while Jesus seems to create a guitar-like sound by plucking gigantic piano-strings with his hands." Askin's arrangement translates the Jesus-guitar-sound into a charming intermezzo of real string sounds played by harp, piano, and electric guitar. As a strong contrast, "Put a Motor In Yourself" is driven by strong mechanical activity: The arrangement for ensemble - including electronic tone colors - makes the rhythmic and melodic levels audible and almost tangible.

One should also point out that even "Moggio" (from "Man From Utopia") was composed on synclavier, the perfect playground for Zappa's appetite for complex and abrupt passages. However, "Moggio" is of course a real rock band piece, played with enthusiasm by Zappa's own band. The composition is trademark Zappa - with the ironic blasting of many of his march or hymn tunes, paralleled by lightning speed percussion licks, which he loved so much. He is able to juggle musical clichés without slipping into the banal. The snoring sound at the beginning and end of the piece already occurs in Zappa's version.

"Dental Hygiene Dilemma" (including "Does This Kind Of Life Look Interesting To You") accompanies an animation film in "200 Motels" and leads us deep into the scurrile text and sound universe of Frank Zappa. An angel and a devil argue in an exalted melodrama about the soul of the electric bassist Jeff. The devil wants to convince him to forget Zappa's "comedy music" and to play commercial rock music. That which in the original at times reminded one of an anarchistic noise-happening, emerges here as a mixture of paradoxical soap-opera and an avant garde mini-drama, thanks to Ensemble Modern. One can finally appreciate Zappa's eclectic accompaniment music. The title piece, "The Adventures of Greggery Peccary," originally planned as side 8 of the 4-LP set "Läther" is taken even one step further. This is an over 20-minute long absurd radio drama about consumerism, fashion, and the philosophy of time. The main characters are a creative pig and a very clever "philosopher." The music contains calibrated collage characteristics, is full of innuendoes, and remains within one style or meter only for a few seconds at a time. As a matter of fact, Zappa arranged his version of "Greggery Peccary" primarily at his mixing desk and never even imagined that an ensemble could accurately play such a stylistic mosaic. Askin patiently researched all previous versions and fragments, dug up a lot of extra music and put together an optimal "GregPecc" score. The discovery of a bizarre masterpiece.

"Black Page #1," "Naval Aviation in Art," and "Revised Music For Low Budget Orchestra" were also connected with the project "Läther." "Black Page #1" is notorious among Zappa's short pieces, because the title indicates a sheet of paper which is black because of so many notes - the nightmare of many musicians. The written-out percussion solo develops into a highly complex, polyrythmic etude for melodic percussion, emancipated by Ensemble Modern as an exciting orchestral short drama. A piece which Zappa originally conceived for orchestra is "Naval Aviation In Art?," which appeared for the first time on "Orchestral Favorites" in a new arrangement by the composer for the 1984 recording under Pierre Boulez. It is a short, and for Zappa's standard, static piece, achieved with quick, lightning-like figures. Ensemble Modern's instrumentation takes pleasure in a mysterious chamber music nature. An even more interesting work history belongs to the revised "Music For Low Budget Orchestra." The first version as "Music For Electric Violin And Low Budget Orchestra," was about 20 minutes long and was composed in 1970 for the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty's album "King Kong." Originally Zappa wanted a 97-person orchestra, which of course was rejected by the jazz label Blue Note. Zappa had to settle for a ten-person orchestra (therefore the title) which, together with the soloist Ponty, washes through a witty combination of Stravinsky borrowings and jazz clichés. A strongly condensed version was written for "Läther" under the title "Revised Music For Guitar And Low Budget Orchestra." This highly virtuostic miniature suite established an instrumental counterpart to "Greggery Peccary." The "Läther" version was the model for Askin's arrangement, one of the high points of the program. Thereby Zappa's solo in the bridge ("Legend Of The Golden Arches"), which is accompanied by an ostinato figure, was transcribed for trombone. Even Zappa loved such confusion between improvisation and composition. They were part of his most favorite studio-mixing pastimes.

The program begins with the less than two-minutes long piece, "What Will Rumi Do?," which will shock even the most hard-core Zappa fan. As a matter of fact, it is the result of the common history of Frank Zappa and EM. Let's review the story: Zappa put his guests from Germany through an improvisation test in "Joe's Garage." During this test, due to the conversational language of english, there came about a misunderstanding between Zappa and the excellent percussionist Rumi Ogawa. Zappa was amused and immortalized the episode as the title of the musical exercise piece, in which each individual instrument polymetrically piles up on each other.

The technical capabilities of Ensemble Modern are different than those to which Zappa normally had access. They are the abilities of an outstanding chamber orchestra, which simultaneously has an ear for sounds which occur outside in the world of civilization, far removed from the gilded cage of the classical concert hall. "The most fascinating aspect," Roland Diry says about Zappa, "was simple: Here was somebody, who was at home with Varèse and Webern, who however worked with these unusual sounds in the commercial field." This contradiction in Zappa's working style was knocked down (a challenging and fascinating job for the ensemble) above all in his musical language. Zappa's music is not always serious and respectful, however it is always eclectic, ingenious, enthralling, angular, full of relish, entertaining, and easily infectious. Ensemble Modern confirms this fact - in his manner: the most beautiful orange fireball which has ever exploded.

Zie ook/Check out:http://www.ensemblemodern.de

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