ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how both the lyrics and the spoken text interact and support each other in pursuit of the modernistic aesthetics. Frank Zappa is an outstanding figure in Western musical, cultural and even political life of the twentieth century, with a musical legacy of extraordinary stylistic breadth and complexity. The body of Frank Zappa's work bears witness to an extraordinarily erudite approach towards musical composition. Ben Watson claims that 'Frank Zappa's pursuit of modernism is intuitive rather than theoretical', and, unlike for instance Brecht, Zappa was never interested in any kind of cultural radical uprising or modernist agitation, the closest he ever got to this was probably his insistent fight for freedom of speech at the Senate hearings in the 1980s. Comparing the compositional progression thus far with the concurrent development of the lyrics, it is striking that musical trends do not take place in an isolated fashion.
