Frank and Edgard: How Zappa found Varèse

Frank Zappa 101: the most revolutionary of musics

If you are a Zappa fan, one entry-level story that you most certainly know is the story of how Frank Zappa, almost accidentally, discovered the music of the French-American composer Edgard Varèse. Let’s take the time to revisit that story, and maybe flesh it out a little bit more, because that discovery (along with Frank’s first exposure to R&B, which happened around the same time), came to define Zappa as a Composer.

In the June 1971 issue of Stereo Review, Frank discussed, in his piece “Edgard Varèse, The Idol Of My Youth”, his stumbling upon the music of Varèse when “I was about thirteen” in an issue of Look magazine:

I have been asked to write about Edgard Varèse. I am in no way qualified to. I can’t even pronounce his name right. The only reason I have agreed to is because I love his music very much, and if by some chance this article can influence more people to hear his works, it will have been worthwhile.

I was about thirteen when I read an article in Look about Sam Goody’s Record Store in New York. My memory is not too clear on the details, but I recall it was praising the store’s exceptional record merchandising ability. One example of brilliant salesmanship described how, through some mysterious trickery, the store actually managed to sell an album called “Ionization” (the real name of the album was “The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One”). The article described the record as a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds.

I dashed off to my local record store and asked for it. Nobody ever heard of it. I told the guy in the store what it was like. He turned away, repulsed, and mumbled solemnly, “I probably wouldn’t stock it anyway ... nobody here in San Diego would buy it.”

I didn’t give up. I was so hot to get that record I couldn’t even believe it. In those days I was a rhythm-and-blues fanatic. I saved any money I could get (sometimes as much as $2 a week) so that every Friday and Saturday I could rummage through piles of old records at the Juke Box Used Record Dump (or whatever they called it) in the Maryland Hotel or the dusty corners of little record stores where they’d keep the crappy records nobody wanted to buy.

One day I was passing a hi-fi store in La Mesa. A little sign in the window announced a sale on 45’s. After shuffling through their singles rack and finding a couple of Joe Houston records, I walked toward the cash register. On my way, I happened to glance into the LP bin. Sitting in the front, just a little bent at the corners, was a strange-looking black-and-white album cover. On it there was a picture of a man with gray frizzy hair. He looked like a mad scientist. I thought it was great that somebody had finally made a record of a mad scientist. I picked it up. I nearly (this is true, ladies and gentlemen) peed in my pants ... THERE IT WAS! EMS 401, The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse Volume I ... Intégrales, Density 21.5, Ionization, Octandre . . . Rene Le Roy, the N. Y. Wind Ensemble, the Juilliard Percussion Orchestra, Frederic Waldman Conducting ... liner notes by Sidney Finkelstein! WOW!

I ran over to the singles box and stuffed the Joe Houston records back in it. I fumbled around in my pocket to see how much money I had (about $3.80). I knew I had to have a lot of money to buy an album. Only old people had enough money to buy albums. I’d never bought an album before. I sneaked over to the guy at the cash register and asked him how much EMS 401 cost. “That gray one in the box? $5.95.”

I had searched for that album for over a year, and now ... disaster. I told the guy I only had $3.80. He scratched his neck. “We use that record to demonstrate the hi-fi’s with, but nobody ever buys one when we use it ... you can have it for $3.80 if you want it that bad. “

I couldn’t imagine what he meant by “demonstrating hi-fi’s with it.” I’d never heard a hi-fi. I only knew that old people bought them. I had a genuine lo-fi ... it was a little box about 4 inches deep with imitation wrought-iron legs at each corner (sort of brass-plated) which elevated it from the table top because the speaker was in the bottom. My mother kept it near the ironing board. She used to listen to a 78 of The Little Shoemaker on it. I took off the 78 of The Little Shoemaker and, carefully moving the speed lever to 33 1/3 (it had never been there before), turned the volume all the way up and placed the all-purpose Osmium-tip needle in the lead-in spiral to Ionization. I have a nice Catholic mother who likes Roller Derby. Edgard Varèse does not get her off, even to this very day. I was forbidden to play that record in the living room ever again.

In order to listen to The Album, I had to stay in my room. I would sit there every night and play it two or three times and read the liner notes over and over. I didn’t understand them at all. I didn’t know what timbre was. I never heard of polyphony. I just liked the music because it sounded good to me. I would force anybody who came over to listen to it. (I had heard someplace that in radio stations the guys would make chalk marks on records so they could find an exact spot, so I did the same thing to EMS 401 ... marked all the hot items so my friends wouldn’t get bored in the quiet parts.)

I went to the library and tried to find a book about Mr. Varèse. There wasn’t any. The librarian told me he probably wasn’t a Major Composer. She suggested I look in books about new or unpopular composers. I found a book that had a little blurb in it (with a picture of Mr. Varèse as a young man, staring into the camera very seriously) saying that he would be just as happy growing grapes as being a composer.

On my fifteenth birthday my mother said she’d give me $5. I told her I would rather make a long-distance phone call. I figured Mr. Varèse lived in New York because the record was made in New York (and because he was so weird, he would live in Greenwich Village). I got New York Information, and sure enough, he was in the phone book.

His wife answered. She was very nice and told me he was in Europe and to call back in a few weeks. I did. I don’t remember what I said to him exactly, but it was something like: “I really dig your music.” He told me he was working on a new piece called Déserts. This thrilled me quite a bit since I was living in Lancaster, California then. When you’re fifteen and living in the Mojave Desert and find out that the world’s greatest composer, somewhere in a secret Greenwich Village laboratory, is working on a song about your “home town” you can get pretty excited. It seemed a great tragedy that nobody in Palmdale or Rosamond would care if they ever heard it. I still think Déserts is about Lancaster, even if the liner notes on the Columbia LP say it’s something more philosophical.

All through high school I searched for information about Varèse and his music. One of the most exciting discoveries was in the school library in Lancaster. I found an orchestration book that had score examples in the back, and included was an excerpt from Offrandes with a lot of harp notes (and you know how groovy harp notes look). I remember fetishing the book for several weeks.

When I was eighteen I got a chance to go to the East Coast to visit my Aunt Mary in Baltimore. I had been composing for about four years then but had not heard any of it played. Aunt Mary was going to introduce me to some friend of hers (an Italian gentleman) who was connected with the symphony there. I had planned on making a side trip to mysterious Greenwich Village. During my birthday telephone conversation, Mr. Varèse had casually mentioned the possibility of a visit if I was ever in the area. I wrote him a letter when I got to Baltimore, just to let him know I was in the area.

I waited. My aunt introduced me to the symphony guy. She said, “This is Frankie. He writes orchestra music.” The guy said, “Really? Tell me, sonny boy, what’s the lowest note on a bassoon?” I said, “B flat ... and also it says in the book you can get ‘em up to a C or something in the treble clef.” He said, “Really? You know about violin harmonics?” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “See me again in a few years.”

I waited some more. The letter came. I couldn’t believe it. A real handwritten letter from Edgard Varèse! I still have it in a little frame. In very tiny scientific-looking script it says:

VII 12th/57

Dear Mr. Zappa

I am sorry not to be able to grant your request. I am leaving
for Europe next week and will be gone until next spring. I am
hoping however to see you on my return. With best wishes.

Sincerely
Edgard Varèse

I never got to meet Mr. Varèse. But I kept looking for records of his music. When he got to be about eighty I guess a few companies gave in and recorded some of his stuff. Sort of a gesture, I imagine. I always wondered who bought them besides me. It was about seven years from the time I first heard his music till I met someone else who even knew he existed. That person was a film student at USC. He had the Columbia LP with Poème électronique on it. He thought it would make groovy sound effects.

I can’t give you any structural insights or academic suppositions about how his music works or why I think it sounds so good. His music is completely unique. If you haven’t heard it yet, go hear it. If you’ve already heard it and think it might make groovy sound effects, listen again. I would recommend the Chicago Symphony recording of Arcana on RCA (at full volume) or the Utah Symphony recording of Ameriques on Vanguard. Also, there is a biography by Fernand Oulette, and miniature scores are available for most of his works, published by G. Ricordi.

The magazine in question was the November 7th, 1950 edition of Look, in which their “Look Record Guide” carried this brief review of EMS 401, The Complete Works Of Edgard Varése Vol. 1:

The good-things-from-obscure-places department has come up with the following finds. From EMS, the first album of a series which proposes to record the complete works of the fantastically individualistic composer Edgard Varése. Density 21.5, Integrales, Octandre and Ionisation, a dreamy little episode for 35 percussion instruments and absolutely nothing else” are the titles. Varése is unlike anything else in music, and well worth knowing. The recording is excellent.

Notice anything odd here? You may have picked up on the fact that the review is actually quite favorable. I personally have always wondered why anybody who worked for a “sophisticated” magazine such as Look would bother to review an album of contemporary classical music if they were not interested in such things. Dissonance and abstraction were not practiced in composition by Varése alone – lots of classical music of the early 20th century made these central to the compositions. If anything, a reviewer of the time, if they had any credibility reviewing albums in that genre, would have been open to the musical concepts that Varése was putting forth. He may have been a maverick, and very much on the cutting edge, but he was not alone in his endeavors. A relatively “hip” reviewer would know this.

So the question will always be: was it really that Look magazine review that introduced Frank to the music of Varèse? I think we can safely rule out the idea that Frank remembered the review exactly as written. Many Zappa researchers over the years have come to the conclusion that Frank may have been conflating various bits and pieces of reviews or articles about Varèse, and this seems likely, though no one has ever come across an article or review that read anything like the piece that Frank remembered. Again, while a layman may have had that sort of negative reaction to the album, a reviewer qualified to write about contemporary classical music of the time would likely not have dismissed the album out of hand.

A good summation of the possible articles that Frank may have conflated can be found here.

We know that Frank, somewhat miraculously, managed to find the record in his local record shop, took it home, played it to death on the little record player the Zappas had in their home, marked the “good bits” with chalk on the vinyl itself so that he could play those parts for his friends, pretty much failed completely to convert his friends to the music of Varèse, and began developing his individual compositional insignia from this music. Frank Zappa was on his way to becoming Frank Zappa.

As Frank recalled in The Real Frank Zappa Book, it was in 1955, on his 15th birthday, that Frank persuaded his mother, Rose Marie, to allow him to make a long-distance phone call to Varèse in New York City in lieu of a birthday present. For a 15-year-old in 1955, this was quite the present indeed, as long-distance phone calls were extremely expensive at the time (and would remain so until the dawn of the Internet). Frank’s first call to New York was unsuccessful as Varèse was away at the time, but Frank was undaunted and a second phone call resulted in him, actually speaking to his idol for a few precious minutes.

Frank followed this up in August 1957 with a letter, which was published in the 2006 biography Edgard Varèse, Composer, Sound Sculptor, Visionary:

Mr. Edgard Varese
188 Sullivan St.
New York, New York

Dear Sir:

Perhaps you might remember me from my stupid phone call last January, if not, my name again is Frank Zappa Jr. I am 16 years old... that might explain partly my disturbing you last winter.

The reason for my letter at this time is that I am visiting relatives in Baltimore and as long as I am on the East Coast I hope I can get to see you. It might seem strange but ever since I was 13 I have been interested in your music.The whole thing stems from the time when the keeper of this little record store sold me your album “The Complete Works of Edgard Varese, Vol.l.” The only reason I knew it existed was that an article in either LOOK or the POST mentioned it as being noisy and unmusical and only good for trying out the sound systems in high fidelity units (referring to your “IONISATIONS” [sic]).

I don’t know how the store I got it from ever obtained it, but, after several hearings, I became curious and bought it for $5.40, which, at the time[,] seemed awfully high and[,] being so young, kept me broke for three weeks. Now I wouldn’t trade it for anything and I am looking around for another copy as the one I have is very worn and scratchy.

After I had struggled through Mr. Finklestein’s [recte: Finkelstein’s] notes on the back cover (I really did struggle too, for at the time I had had no training in music other than practice at drum rudiments) I became more and more interested in you and your music. I began to go to the library and take out books on modern composers and modern music, to learn all I could about Edgard Varese. It got to be my best subject (your life) and I began writing my reports and term papers on you at school. At one time when my history teacher asked us to write on an American that has really done something for the U.S.A. I wrote on you and the Pan American Composers League [sic] and the New Symphony. I failed. The teacher had never heard of you and said I made the whole thing up. Silly but true. That was in my Sophomore year in high school.

Throughout my life all the talents and abilities that God has left me with have been self developed, and when the time came for Frank to learn how to read and write music, Frank taught himself that too. I picked it all up from the library. I have been composing for two years now, utilizing a strict twelve-tone technique, producing effects that are reminiscent of Anton Webern. During those two years I have written two short woodwind quartets and a short symphony for winds, brass and percussion.

Recently I have been earning my keep at home with my blues band, the BLACKOUTS. We have done quite well and in my association with my fellow musicians I am learning to play other instruments besides drums. I paint in oils and watercolor and last year produced a cartoon film in school by painting color directly onto a 250 foot reel of cleared 16 mm movie film. I painted on the color in such a way that I managed to closely, but not completely, synchronize their movements to your “DENSITY 21.5” and the second “movement” of “OCTANDRE”. It brought about some amazing results from the audience and my counselors in the office allowed me to make a trip I had planned to Walt Disney studios with the film.

Nothing ever came of my trip, but when I got back to school I was informed I had a chance to be skipped from the Junior year in high school to the Freshman year at the junior college which adjoined the school as an experiment. I went to the Jaycee and studied harmony and music appreciation and history for one semester and came out of it with A’s and B’s.

I plan to go on and be a composer after college and I could really use the counsel of a veteran such as you. If you would allow me to visit with you for even a few hours it would be greatly appreciated. It may sound strange but I think I have something to offer you in the way of new ideas. One is an elaboration on the principle of Ruth Seeger’s contrapuntal dynamics and the other is an extension of the twelve-tone technique which I call the inversion square. It enables one to compose harmonically constructed pantonal music in logical patterns and progressions while still abandoning tonality.

Would you please reply as soon as possible because I will not be here much longer. My address here is 4803 Loch Raven Blvd., Baltimore[,] Maryland. Phone Hopkins 77336.

Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Frank Zappa Jr.

The letter is charming in both its excitement and naïveté. I’m sure that we can all relate to Frank‘s enthusiasm here. Shortly thereafter, Frank received the reply from Varèse himself that he included in his “Idol Of My Youth” piece at the top of this post.

Frank never had the opportunity to speak to Varèse again. No doubt he would have looked Varèse open New York City upon his arrival there in late 1966, but his idol had passed awa in December 1965. Frank would later recall his anger at the fact that there was no monument or even much of any acknowledgment of his death at the time.

Needless to say, Frank did not allow the work of Edgard Varèse to be forgotten about. As early as 1968, The Mothers Of Invention would typically close their performances with a brief arrangement of one of the most dissonant of all Varèse pieces, “Octondre”. Various references to the work of the composer would be made throughout Frank’s touring life, and of course, the famous Varèse one-line manifesto “the present-day composer refuses to die!” was included in the packaging of early Mothers albums, this being a statement that Frank identified with strenuously.

In April 17th, 1981, Frank hosted a performance at his old stomping ground of New York City’s Palladium where, under the baton of Orchestra Of Our Time conductor Joel Thome (who would later conduct with Orchestra Of Our Time at the 1991 New York City Zappa’s Universe tribute shows), a number of Varèse pieces were played to the usual riotous New York Zappa crowd:

Frank agreed to appear at another Varèse tribute on February 9th, 1983, when he conducted the Varèse pieces “Ionisation”, “Offrandes”, “Poeme Electronique” and “Integrales” at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco as part of a tribute show titled Varèse And Webern: One Hundreth Anniversary Celebration. A clip of “Ionisation” from a rehearsal for this performance was later aired by MTV:

“Ionisation” from the San Francisco performance can be heard here:

And here is “Integrales” from that performance:

In what has to be an almost unbearably poetic full-circle final statement, Frank chose to end his musical career just as he began it, by working with Ensemble Modern to create a sort of “definitive” interpretation of the works of Varèse, to be entitled Varèse: The Rage And The Fury. Frank produced the album on the Warner Brothers soundstage in Burbank in July of 1993, even standing up to occasionally conduct the band. The film team of Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, a.k.a. “The Torpedo Twins”, was on hand to capture the recording of the album for a film documentary. Bits and pieces of footage have appeared in various Zappa documentaries, and here we see a bit of a weakened but defiant Frank Zappa, lost in the music while conducting a performance of “Ionisation”:

Frank actually managed to complete the album in the final weeks of his life, but it has never been released. Initially, the reason for this seems to have been some sort of a dispute between the Zappa Estate and the filmmakers, though this appears to have been long since resolved. In an interview with yours truly back in 2020, Ahmet Zappa stated that, for him, as this was a deeply personal project for Frank, the album should be released in cooperation with all four of the Zappa children, a remote possibility at that time. In another interview that I and Bill Camarata did with him in 2025, Ahmet revealed that the rights to this album are still held by the Zappa Trust, but expressed optimism that all four of the Zappa kids would be involved in the release and promotion of the album. So it will happen at some point.

(Just as an aside, it has been reported that Frank’s original copy of the Varèse EMS 401 album currently resides, along with the rest of his record collection, with his daughter, Diva. I can neither confirm nor deny this.)

To conclude this week’s piece, why don’t we all do just exactly what Frank would want us to do, and crank some Varèse! Here we have the complete EMS 401 album The Complete Works Of Edgard Varèse - yes folks, the album that changed Frank Zappa forever. Immerse yourselves and ye too shall be changed!

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