Videography Vladimir Paje

Program Notes by Lucinda Mosher, Th.D.

In 1909, Ralph Vaughan Williams accepted a commission to compose incidental music for a Cambridge University production of The Wasps, a play by the great Greek dramatist Aristophanes dating from 422 BCE. Sometime later, Vaughan Williams arranged portions of that music into a five-movement Aristophanic Suite for orchestra. Its first movement, the overture, soon became a favorite stand-alone piece. The Wasps satirizes the Athenian judiciary—but also humanity’s persistent love of litigation. The play really has nothing to do with insects that fly and sting. Nevertheless, Vaughan Williams begins his overture with buzzing—which gives a taste of his sense of humor! What follows contains little that would suggest ancient Greece. More so, it reveals what Vaughan Williams had brought home from France after his three months of intensive study with Maurice Ravel: a new ability to meld bold use of orchestral colors with his love for the music of the English countryside. The overture’s first section features jaunty pentatonic melodies in the manner of English folk-tunes. The pensive middle section offers another melody which expands until an extended trill explodes that mood. “Busy music” gradually transitions us back to the bouncy themes with which we began. But not, alas, to more buzzing!