Ralph Vaughan Williams after Boult, Sargent and Barbirolli are Vernon Handley, Richard Hickox, Sir Mark Elder and Sir Andrew Davis. Record companies with extensive lists of Vaughan Williams recordings include EMI, Decca, Chandos, Hyperion and Naxos. Vaughan Williams refused a knighthood at least once, and declined the post of Master of the King's Music after Elgar's death. The one state honour he accepted was the Order of Merit in 1935, which confers no prenominal title: he preferred to remain "Dr Vaughan Williams". His academic and musical honours included an honorary doctorate of music from the University of Oxford (1919); the Cobbett medal for
The Wasps (Vaughan Williams) "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 (Vaughan Williams) The Wasps is incidental music composed by the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1909. It was written for a production of Aristophanes' "The Wasps" at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was Vaughan Williams' first of only three forays into incidental music. A later performance of the work was one of only a small number of performances conducted by Williams that was committed to a recording. It was