M.Neumann Before the album "Jazz From Hell", there was "Baroque Music From Hell", a synthesized update by Frank Zappa of several long-lost sonatas by 18th century violoncello composer Francesco Zappa (yes: an actual person, but no relation, despite what Frank may have claimed in his autobiography). In the early 1980s the contemporary Zappa discovered these never-recorded trios gathering dust at the UC Berkeley music library, and promptly adapted them for the 'Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort', his tongue-in-cheek tag for the newest toy in his basement studio at the time, the Synclavier.

It was strictly a one-man novelty record, and hardly fresh even then. Prog Rock keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman (not often compared to anyone like Frank Zappa) had covered identical ground in the song "Cans and Brahms", from the 1972 Yes album "Fragile". And Wendy (then Walter) Carlos had released the seminal "Switched On Bach" in the dark ages of 1968, accomplishing with a primitive Moog Synthesizer exactly what Zappa would do with his Synclavier two decades later.

The startling coincidence of the twin Zappa names (and the fact that both were musicians: what are the odds?) is the most memorable aspect of the album. Otherwise it's doubtful Frank would have devoted himself to such an indulgent project. The irreverent cover art and notes show he didn't regard it very seriously: this wasn't, for example, the classical music equivalent of his "Cruising With Ruben & the Jets" doo-wop homage.

But at the same time there's at least a certain integrity to the finished product. It may be nothing more than rinky-dink digital muzak, but the album can at least provide a pleasant background to any task requiring minimal brain work (like reading this review, for instance).

And what looks like another stingy two-star rating was assigned only by default. The album isn't exactly poor, but it isn't very good either: there's a reason Francesco Zappa's name is never mentioned in the same breath as Mozart, or even Antonio Salieri. And it's difficult to imagine diehard fans of Uncle Frank wanting to complete their Zappa collections with an album of music better suited to the toddler play area of the Korova Milk Bar.

UMUR "Francesco Zappa" is an album release by US, California based artist Frank Zappa. The album was released through Barking Pumpkin Records in November 1984 and is sandwiched between "Them or Us" from October 1984 and "Thing-Fish" from December 1984.

"Francesco Zappa" is a rather unusual Zappa release, as it doesn´t feature a single piece of music composed by Zappa himself. The album instead features 17 pieces of classical chamber music composed by Italian composer Francesco Zappa (who was active from 1763 and 1788 and despite sharing sur-name with Frank Zappa, aren´t otherwise related). Francesco Zappa isn´t a particularly prolific classical composer in the eyes/ears of today, but in his time he was a highly regarded cellist known for his virtuosic skills on the instrument and his compositions were published and distributed throughout Europe. He spend most of his working life on The Hague's 18th-century music scene. Frank Zappa discovered the music of Francesco Zappa when David Ocker (copyist, synclavier programmer, and clarinetist) introduced Zappa to one of Francesco Zappa´s pieces, and Zappa soon after began a search for sheet music, which proved a difficult task, but he eventually was able to locate some sheet papers.

With the help of Ocker, he then programmed some of the Francesco Zappa pieces into his Synclavier synthesizer and thus we have the "Francesco Zappa" album. A through and through bizarre music experiment and probably not how Francesco Zappa would have imagined the first publication of his music would sound like (not that he could probably even image a publication since he died over 200 years ago). The compositions themselves are rather generic chamber music, influenced by the baroque period which had just ended (gradually faded around 1750). They are decent pieces of classical chamber music, but nothing out of the ordinary for the style, and performed by the Synclavier synthesizer the material becomes a somewhat odd listen. The music which was clearly intended to be played on organic classical music instruments, ends up sounding like plastique casio keyboard elevator muzak.

I´m not sure why Frank Zappa found this music appealing or why he thought it was a good idea to spend time, money, and effort, getting these compositions released, but to my ears it´s probably the least interesting release in his entire discography. I´d even listen to some of the lo-fi quality official bootlegs before listening to this one. It´s not that it´s a horrible listening experience, but it leaves me indifferent and a 2 - 2.5 star (45%) rating isn´t all wrong.