Ithaca College

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band’s landmark 1969 album Trout Mask Replica surely is one of the strangest rock albums ever released, notable for its off-putting combination of harmonic dissonance, out-of-synch counterpoint, abrupt changes of texture, surreal lyrics, and an obstinate avoidance of many of rock’s standard style markers. The album’s most original contribution, however, is its use of forms usually associated with mid-twentieth century modernist composers such as Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and Ligeti. In employing these types of forms instead of conventional verse-chorus form Beefheart plays with the listener’s sense of time in ways that are uncommon in rock, reinforced by producer Frank Zappa’s unorthodox recording techniques.

This presentation will use recordings and transcriptions to investigate musical form in several songs from Trout Mask Replica, and will compare those songs to works by Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and other composers. I also will introduce theories of musical time and will use them to describe the types of time experiences Trout Mask Replica’s songs produce. The presentation will culminate in an analysis of Trout Mask Replica’s most complicated song, “The Blimp (mousetrapreplica),” which will include a discussion of how Zappa’s recording techniques helped shape the song

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Deborah Rifkin at drifkin@ithaca.edu or (607) 274-3786. We ask that requests for accommodations be made as soon as possible.