Francesco Zappa

Tracks

1. Opus 1 - #1: 1st movement - Andante (03:31)
2. Opus 1 - #1: 2nd movement - Allegro Con Brio (01:28)
3. Opus 1 - #2: 1st movement - Andantino (02:14)
4. Opus 1 - #2: 2nd movement - Minuetto Grazioso (02:04)
5. Opus 1 - #3: 1st movement - Andantino (01:52)
6. Opus 1 - #3: 2nd movement - Presto (01:51)
7. Opus 1 - #4: 1st movement - Andante (02:20)
8. Opus 1 - #4: 2nd movement - Allegro (03:05)
9. Opus 1 - #5: 2nd movement - Minuetto Grazioso (02:29)
10. Opus 1 - #6: 1st movement - Largo (02:09)
11. Opus 1 - #6: 2nd movement - Minuet (02:03)
12. Opus 4 - #1: 1st movement - Andantino (02:48)
13. Opus 4 - #1: 2nd movement - Allegro Assai (02:02)
14. Opus 4 - #2: 2nd movement - Allegro Assai (01:20)
15. Opus 4 - #3: 1st movement - Andante (02:24)
16. Opus 4 - #3: 2nd movement - Tempo Di Minuetto (02:00)
17. Opus 4 - #4: 1st movement - Minuetto (02:10)

Players

• Performed by The Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort (Frank Zappa, conductor).
• Synclavier document encryption by David Ocker
• Engineered by Bob Stone and Mark Pinske
• Second engineer: Tom Ehle
• Cover painting: Donald Roller Wilson
• Collage: Gabrielle Raumberger
• Graphics: New Age Art

Background

The album's subtitle reads: "The Music Of Francesco Zappa (fl. 1763-1788). His First Digital Recording In Over 200 Years". Francesco Zappa was an obscure composer living in Milan.

He was a composer who flourished between 1766 and 1788. Nobody knows when he was born or when he died. He was a cello player from Milan and wrote mostly string trios. I found out about his music and located a bunch of it in the Berkeley Library and the Library of Congress. My assistant loaded it into the Synclavier and now we have a whole album of synthesized performances.

He was a contemporary of Mozart. It's kind of happy, Italian-sounding music. It's nice, and real melodic. It's interesting, too; he does a few strange things harmonically that seem to be slightly ahead of his time -- a few little weird things. Basically, it's typical of music of that period, except it doesn't sound typical when it comes out of the Synclavier.

Frank Zappa (Interview 1984)

[Grove's] entry reads:

Zappa, Francesco

(b Milan; fl 1763–88). Italian cellist and composer. The dedication of his six trios for two violins and bass (London, 1765) shows that he had given the Duke of York, the dedicatee, music lessons in Italy (the duke had been in Italy from late November 1763 to mid-1764). By 1767, the year of the duke’s death, he had entered his service as maestro di musica, as shown by the title-page of his trio sonatas op.2. He then apparently took up residence in The Hague as a music master. He was still there in 1788, according to the place and date of a manuscript Quartetto concertante (inD-Bsb). He had a reputation among his contemporaries as a virtuoso and he toured Germany in 1771, playing in Danzig and, on 22 September, in Frankfurt. According to Mendel, he made another concert tour of Germany in 1781 (though this may be an error for 1771).

Zappa’s writing is lyrical, but tends towards a seriousness of manner in which the galant elements are tempered by a Classical dignity. His works with obbligato cello demonstrate an easy familiarity with thumb position fingerings, slurred staccato bowings and idiomatic string crossing patterns.