The Wasps (Vaughan Williams)
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The Wasps is a suite for orchestra composed by the prominent British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1909. It originally premièred as incidental music for a production of Aristophanes' The Wasps at Trinity College, Cambridge. The overture continues to be a popular concert piece today.
The suite is in five parts:
- Overture
- Entr'acte
- March past of the kitchen utensils
- Entr'acte
- Ballet and final tableau
The year before he wrote The Wasps, Vaughan Williams spent three months in Paris studying orchestration with Maurice Ravel. Although The Wasps may reflect something of Ravel, it is quintessential Vaughan Williams. Except for the opening buzzing, the piece has little to do with wasps or with ancient Greece. The Wasps was Vaughan Williams' first foray into incidental music.
[edit] External links
- Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) - Overture: The Wasps, a concise essay on MusicWeb International
- First complete recording of The Wasps, reviewed by MusicWeb International (Hallé HLD7510)
- List of Works - plays, radio and film, with notations by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society
