Overture “The Wasps”

Wasps no doubt behaved and sounded much the same in ancient Greece as they did in early twentieth-century Cambridge and as they do now. The vicious little insects are to be heard buzzing about and delivering a nasty sting at the beginning of the overture Vaughan Williams wrote for a Cambridge University production of the Greek comedy The Wasps in 1909. They would have been just as recognisable to Aristophanes, who wrote the play somewhere round 400 BC, as they are today. There is, however, something slightly incongruous, though by no means unwelcome, about the tune introduced by clarinet and bassoon as the wasps abruptly take flight from the scene: while it is certainly in an appropriate comis spirit, it is unmistakably English in melodic character. It is not an actual folk song but, like the broader theme that enters next on the violins and is then combined with the clarinet tune, it was written by a composer so steeped in the English folk tradition that it is scarcely distinguishable from the real thing.

There is a similar inspiration in the more lyrical middle section of the overture where, in response to poetic anticipations on horn and solo violin, a lovely new melody floats in on clarinet, horn and violas over a rippling accompaniment on harp and violins. After a brief return of the wasps, a dramatic development and a recapitulation, the lyrical melody from the middle section is rapturously combined on trumpet and woodwind with the first of the main themes on strings. A brisk coda and a last wasp sting conclude the piece. The several items of incidental music Vaughan Williams supplied for the same production of The Wasps was later published, with the Overture, in his “Aristophanic Suite.”