Faust Overture Faust Overture The Faust Overture is a concert overture by German composer Richard Wagner. Wagner originally composed it between 1839 and 1840, intending it to be the first movement of a "Faust Symphony" based on the play "Faust" by German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Realizing that he would not finish the planned symphony, Wagner revised the piece between 1843 and 1844, incorporating ideas from the other planned movements, and creating instead a single-movement concert overture. He made a final revision in 1855. The work is one of Wagner's few compositions intended for the concert hall, rather than the theatre.
The Wasps (Vaughan Williams) and is not often performed. Vaughan Williams later arranged parts of the music into an orchestral suite (about 26 minutes), in five parts: The "Overture" is quite concise (about 10 minutes) and is a popular independent concert piece today. The main theme is pentatonic. There are close to 30 recordings now available of the overture. The "March Past of the Kitchen Utensils" is also quite charming and sometimes separately performed. The entire orchestral suite is also sometimes performed and recorded. The year before he wrote "The Wasps", Vaughan Williams spent three months in Paris studying orchestration with Maurice Ravel. Although