Amnesia Vivace

Amnesia Vivace is the third track from Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention's second album Absolutely Free and the second part of The Duke of Prunes Suite. Unlike the other songs in the suite, it is a middle section and is very musically dense. It's not exactly xenochrony, but it does have two different pieces of music playing over each other.

Background
Immediately following "The Duke of Prunes", "Amnesia Vivace" is a cacophony of sounds with multiple quotations from various Igor Stravinsky plays and parodies "Duke of Earl", a #1 hit for Gene Chandler in 1962. All of this happens at the same time. According to The Absolutely Free Libretto, this song takes place after The Duke of Prunes finding his Douchess of Prunes. He tries to hit on some cheerleaders, but they beat him up and give him amnesia.

The song's musical contents includes quotes from the pieces "Ritual of the Ancestors" (The Rite of Spring), "Introduction" (The Rite of Spring), and "Lullaby" (The Freebird). In 1992, Frank said that mixing two things together was fun just to "see what would happen". And thus came this song.

Versions
This song was never performed live and was not added to the orchestral version of "The Duke of Prunes", as "The Duke Regains His Chops" was. It was too hard to perform live, so the band never actually did. In place of the song for the orchestral versions, Frank played a guitar solo.

Personnel
Absolutely Free


 * Ray Collins – vocals (as The Duke of Prunes)
 * Frank Zappa – electric guitar
 * Roy Estrada – bass
 * Billy Mundi – drums
 * Don Preston – keyboards
 * Bunk Gardner – woodwinds
 * Jimmy Carl Black – timpani

Project/Object clues
Ray Collins plays The Duke of Prunes and the band members chant Prunes throughout the track.
 * Prunes