Frazzi composed symphonic, choral and chamber music, and a number of operas.
Re Lear was written between 1922 and 1928, but not performed until 1939; it is loosely based on Shakespeare's
King Lear.
Don Chisciotte, to Frazzi's own libretto derived from the
Don Quijote of
Cervantes and the
Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho of
Miguel de Unamuno, was composed between 1940 and 1950 and received its première at the
Teatro Comunale of Florence on 28 April 1952. It consists of six scenes which may be performed either separately or together; a supplement to it,
Le nozze di Camaccio ("the marriage of Camaccio"), though published, has apparently not been performed. Frazzi destroyed the score of his opera
L’ottava moglie di Barbablù ("Bluebeard's eighth wife") after its première at the
Teatro della Pergola in Florence in January 1940; the work is unpublished. Frazzi's compositional style is characterised by extensive use of the
octatonic scale of alternating tones and semitones. He was among the first to explore the theory of this scale, and his
Scale alternate, "alternating scales", may be the earliest published work on the topic (an unpublished treatise by
Edmond de Polignac dates from about 1879). His
I vari sistemi del linguaggio musicale, "the various systems of musical language", treats of the same subject. ==Publications==