Robert Peters writes in response to me responding to him:

>>>I think the comic nature of the song is obvious, at least in the recordings
>>>by Pears and Bostridge.  The unfestive pace, the coloratura in "excellent"
>>>(like a deliberate parody), the silly repeat of the word "Goddess" (utterly
>>>uncelebratory), the brisk and most funny "bright" at the end of each
>>>strophe.  Well, all thinks speaks out for a deliberate comic nature of
>>>the piece.  (at least IMHO)
>>
>>Do you find "Dido and Aeneas" comic? You'll find all the features you
>>isolate there, too.
>
>I find Dido and Aeneas not comic. Does it have any silly repeats?

You, not I, characterised the verbal repetitions in "Queen and Huntress" as
"silly".  If that is what you hear, I was suggesting that you cannot have
been listening to the song with a sympathetic or informed ear.  Of course,
if you're looking for textual repetitions in "Dido" without any extraneous
value judgement, you won't have far to seek.

>>Perhaps if you realign your hearing of the Britten setting in the light
>>of his love and understanding of Purcell, your observations (which seem
>>so weirdly skewed against what Britten is actually doing) will fall into
>>place.  Perhaps you'll even agree that "festivity" in English music can be
>>exhilarating, light as air and fleet-footed as well as solidly bucolic.
>
>So you know exactly what Britten is actually doing.  Listen to Pears
>and Bostridge.  I think my interpreting their reading as comic is quite
>defendable.

(a) It's clear enough to any sympathetic listener what Britten wants the
song to do in the context of the whole piece.  It functions as a scherzo,
and scherzos as we know need not be funny (c.f.  Bruckner, or more
relevantly here Mozart).

(b) I have lived with at least three Pears performances - including the one
you mention - for many years and "comedy", at least in the facetious way
you describe the song, is certainly not an ingredient of his singing of it.
Wit, yes.  Intelligence, certainly.  Affectation, possibly.  But an attempt
to make the song "funny" or "silly", certainly not.

As for (c) I'm afraid I don't think your opinions on the song deserve to
pass muster as a "reading" at all.  They are self-consciously negative; and
objectively indefensible as they display no sympathy for the piece, or a
willingness to stretch out and meet it on its own ground.  They fail to
illuminate or enlarge upon it one jot, which is what might be expected of
a "reading", even a critical one.

>(Most of my friends who listening to the music are of my opinion.  Maybe
>we are all weird creatures...)

That's for you to judge - though I am glad you have such loyal friends!

>Jonson was a great satirist and most of his works have an ironic edge.  -
>That a poem is occasional does not mean it is not a highly compressed
>moral comment.

I'm happy you agree about the quality of this well-nigh perfect poem from
"Cynthia's Revells", but I can't follow your characterisation of Jonson.
He was indeed a satirist - but in the classical mould, so "irony" enters
into his work as little as it does into Juvenal.

You will scan Jonson's plays and poems in vain for irony in any important
(or unimportant) sense.  Anger, moral outrage, just deserts, wild farce
and verbal force, yes indeed - but irony, no. Quite the contrary, Jonson
is effective because he uses the honest bludgeon rather than the rapier,
which does not of course mean that he wasn't also a superb craftsman.

>(BTW, I think you overinterpreted the well-crafted, but not too
>deep-digging text.) Most of Goethe's greatest poems were occasional poems.

I haven't begun to lambaste you with my "interpretation" of the poem - to
do so would be outside both the scope of the thread and this newsgroup,
though I'll be more than happy to discuss its depth of metaphor privately.

I needed to flag the fact that Jonson's poem is no tinsel piece of trivia,
but one fully worthy of Britten's apposite and imaginative setting.  I
am glad at least you can see some virtue in the poem, whether or not the
jewelled marvel of the setting eludes you.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"