James Tobin wrote:

>...  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) ...
>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!)

As I hear the Ninth, it's upbeat, optimistic, an eager anticipation of the
better world that enlightenment will most certainly achieve for us; you
might call it an "Ode to Joy"!

I hear the War Requiem as a work describing a world that has fallen
apart (just listen to the "Libera me" w/ its repeated "Dies Irae" preceding
the duo between the tenor and baritone!), where barbarism triumphs over
civilization, where Abraham gleefully consummates the sacrifice that God
had never intended him to perform, and in which death alone can bring about
reconciliation ("I am the enemy you killed, my friend....Let us sleep
now.") The only peace the Boys' Choir, Chorus and Soprano, can hold out for
us is the peace of the grave.

Walter Meyer