Writing at this vantage point, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, less than a decade after Zappa's death, with the full view of his three decades of productivity, I maintain that he holds approximately the same in American music of the second half of the twentieth century as Charles Ives does for first half. Both were outsiders from the established American art music circles; while they practised distinctively American styles of music, they still considered themselves strongly linked with the European avant-garde. The early albums of the Mothers of Invention, through Uncle Meat, with their iconoclasm and eclecticism constitute the strongest articulation of this position. And among them, Uncle Meat, with its higly original structure, is the strongest single statement of Zappa's aspirations as an art music composer.

Source: issuu.com