My good friend Jonathan Ellis mused:

>I wonder whether we could class the "Dirge" from Britten's Serenade for
>Tenor, Horn, and Strings a Chaconne?

I don't know.  But I do know that I heard the wonderful Ian Bostridge sing
this superb work in the Tramway in Glasgow about four years ago, and I've
never heard better in my life.  I believe he's recorded it, along with a
number of other Britten pieces, but I have yet to get hold of the CD.  Just
now, the "must buy" list is growing much faster than I'm getting through it
from the other end.

>And when is somebody going to mention the most sublime chaconne ever
>written: "When I am laid to earth," from "Dido and Aeneas"?

Somebody just did.

Ian
[log in to unmask]