Among the vast recorded output of Frank Zappa's remarkable career, two albums—the very early Lumpy Gravy (1968) and the posthumously released Civilization Phaze III (1994)—have special significance, not only for their great originality but also for the conceptual link between them. A close examination of these works, together with recently issued audio-archival material that provides a basis for conjecture about the genesis of Lumpy Gravy, reveals much about Zappa's unique position in the realms of popular and art music as he negotiated the boundary between them. It also shows how and to what extent Zappa embraced an avant-garde aesthetic in Lumpy Gravy, his first solo album, and how this orientation was abandoned yet also, in a way, echoed in Civilization Phaze III.

In the 1850s, the residents of, and visitors to, New York City experienced a world of rapid and sometimes chaotic change. Various reform movements—including Temperance, Abolition, and Women's Rights—became stronger and more widely known through various media. In 1853 a simple story published in the pages of the New York Tribune took the city by storm. “Hot Corn,” the story of Little Katy, a child peddler, is ostensibly a temperance tale, but something made the story resonate among the public. Soon minstrel songs, sheet music, lectures, novels, and melodramas followed, purporting to herald a new moral crusade against drunkenness, poverty, and child abuse, paralleling Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Abolition movement. Within eighteen months, however, the “Hot Corn” phenomenon had faded almost as quickly as it had begun.

The Third Street Music School Settlement was founded on the Lower East Side of Manhattan as a dedicated music school offering conservatory-style music instruction along with social services in an effort to improve the lives of the immigrant poor and ease their assimilation as citizens of the United States. Music instruction aligned with social action and service was a powerful combination that attracted financial support and strong enrollment. When societal change and economic fluctuations in New York City affected enrollment and the fiscal health of the school, Third Street responded with renewed efforts to foster music instruction within a social context to serve the changing social needs of students and families. These efforts required negotiating a balance between concepts of music as aesthetic object and as social practice. Daily use of classical music as the expression of a diverse musical community has created contexts in which classical music is heard, not as a European cultural product or a historical artifact, but as a dynamic and living part of everyday life, a force for self-realization, and a basis for personal relationships.

Mary Elizabeth (“Mollie”) Parmelee Ives (1850?–1929) has long been a figure of considerable mystery. As Stuart Feder put it, “She is scarcely mentioned in any of the family materials. . . . If not medically an invalid, strictly speaking, she appears to have been treated as one socially.” Indeed, the evidence that has emerged heretofore suggests, at the very least, some unspecified “difficulty”—either physical or mental—associated with Mollie. However, a previously overlooked document in the Ives Papers appears to identify a precise physiological cause for Mollie's condition. This article surveys the extant materials concerning Mollie, describes her alleged symptoms, and re-examines them in the light of the evidence recently uncovered.