Frank Zappa considered “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary” hismasterpiece. It contains every aspect of his melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic language. These techniques include: folk-influenced songs, quartal melodies, asymmetric meters, speech-influenced rhythms, octave-displaced chromaticism, “conceptual continuity,” and creative studio techniques. He considers these aspects and weighs them against each other to maintain a sense of balance on both a micro- and macroscopic scale. The first chapter of this dissertation explores the events that led up to the creation of the composition. A chronology of historical events precedes a synopsis of the piece’s narrative. The second chapter examines a rehearsal tape from March of 1972, which was released posthumously, that contains the song that will eventually become the fourth movement of the piece: “The New Brown Clouds.” That song, as well as others on the recording, contains several examples of Zappa’s musical vocabulary. These excerpts are also included in the two albums that were released and are also heard in Zappa’s magnum opus. The third and fourth chapters examine the first version of “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary.” The third chapter focuses on musical analysis and identifying key components of Zappa’s compositional style. The fourth chapter talks about he Grand Wazoo’s tour, the Petit Wazoo tour a month later, and the subsequent tour in 1973. Zappa wrote new music for these tours, and those pieces became part of the large revision that is discussed in chapter 5. The sixth chapter examines the recording process, locations, and the innovative techniques Zappa uses in the studio. Every time he released a recording of the composition, there was always a notable revision— including shortly before his death in 1993. Finally, the Ensemble Modern’s posthumous recording of “The Adventures of Greggery Peccary” is also scrutinized.

In a Mirror Dimly… is an autobiographical work that follows my mental development from my teen years into my mid-20s and offers a way forward into the future. First comes legalism: a canon, which represents a rule-based thought process. Next is freedom and individuality: indeterminate methods and textures. Finally, the piece concludes with unity and wholeness, using quoted and composed hymns in chorale settings. The conceptual content is taken from Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, a story of a Hindu man’s life through the development of his own ideology into Buddhism. He begins by following the rules of his faith obsessively, then he decides that the rules themselves don’t matter as much as the spirit behind them, and finally he begins to see the interconnectedness of nature through the flow of a river and gains a fuller picture of all that is. I have also included an anxiety motif which begins as an interruption or nuisance; it then takes over in the form of a panic attack but is quelled by a hymn: “Be Still My Soul,” with text written by Katharina von Schlegel set to the tune of Sibelius’ Finlandia. Finally, the anxiety is contained and molded to help the overall texture rather than disrupting it. The anxiety is never truly eradicated, but it is transformed.