Christopher Webber replies to me:

>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.

Christopher, I am not deaf and I know that there are repetitions in
Dido and Aeneas.  But it is MY hearing that these are not of the kind
of repetitions used in Hymn.

>(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).

It is always dubious when someone defends his interpretation as the
absolute right and claims that "any sympathetic listener" will do the same.
I am a teacher and it is exactly this attitude I want to put my pupils off.
One piece can be heard and felt in a thousand ways and a lot of these ways
are justifiable.  I claim to be a sympathetic listener as well as you do
and I know what a scherzo is and scherzos need not to be funny but can be.

>(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.

Here again you make your point absolute.  Well, for my ears the piece is
comic and funny.  For your ears not.  But your hearing is obviously better
than mine.  Maybe you know the true hearing about other musical works as
well so that we at last know exactly what e.g.  the Ring is about.  I
always thought that it is the fine thing about art that it can speak to
many people in many ways.

>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.

Christopher, I cannot help but find this passage of your reply very
self-righteous.  So you are the person who decides which reading is a
reading and which not.  I think it is simply not true that you have to be
a fan of a piece to be able to have a defensable opinion about it.  That
would mean that everyone who does not like Wagner has no right to talk
about his works.  All I did was say that Hymn to be is a comic piece
and that to me both Pears and Bostridge sound funny (and funny is not a
negative judgment) - you instantly take away my right to be a sensible
listener.

>>(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!

They do not hear funny things in it because they are loyal but because
they simply hear it, Christopher.  They are independent people, you know.

>>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.

I think that is simply not true.  Volpone for instance to me (and I think
I can proof it) is a play of utter irony.  - Well, I studied the subject
for ten long years and think there is irony in Jonson.  You do not.  Would
you like if I now called you someone whose reading is no reading at all,
playing the pope? - But then maybe my whole academe time was obviously in
vain...

>>(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.

Christopher, I did not mean to lambaste anyone with my interpretations
and impressions.  I thought this list was about giving one's opinions
of musical works.  Next time I will ask your permission first...

>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, what have I done to anger you so? Don't you agree that there
is not one reading of a poetic and musical work but many? So how can you
"lambaste" me in that way? - But serious: I love the arts.  I love them
because they can set free a lot of wonderful emotions and insights in
human beings.  I love them because they speak differently to different
people.  To claim that one opinion is better than another one will
certainly not spread the love for literature and music.  Would I "lambaste"
my pupils with such an attitude (your reading is no reading, the marvel of
this and that eludes you, people who agree with you are just loyal, your
interpretation is lambasting and so on) they would certainly let me feel
their anger.

Robert Peters
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