Walter Meyer:

>The *War Requiem* is one of my favorite choral works.  I also view it as
>a rescission or revocation of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

As one who shares the first sentiment, I am wondering about the reason
for the second.  It seems to me that Beethoven and Britten shared similar
humane values about the common humanity of all nations, expressed in the
War Requiem (in poignant rather than exultant fashion, to be sure) at the
end in the enounter between the dead British and German soldiers with the
regretful words, as I remember them, "He might have made many men laugh."
When Beethoven wrote the 9th Symphony, his world had just passed through a
quarter century of war, so he was not being naive in setting Schiller, just
emphatic.  (Maybe it's Wellington's Victory that the 9th Symphony revokes!)

Jim Tobin