Kevin Sutton wrote:

>Ed Zubrow wrote:
>
>And it confronts the weakness of God.
>
>Whoa!  I don't think so at all.  The conflict here is between the mercy
>and the barbarism of man himself.

Some might say God betrayed His weakness by failing to create a man less
barbaric.  This, however, will lead us off into a theological thread about
free will, etc., which isn't really about music.

Whether the War Requiem is a criticism of God or of man, it reflects, in
my opinion, more forcefully than any other musical work (including some
of Shostakovich's) the composer's disgust and disillusionment at what God
or man permitted to occur during 1914-1918, in that most pointless of all
wars, which avenged almost no wrongs, prevented no oppressions, ensured no
peace, and eventually became the basis for the next world war, sacrificing
all too much of the seed of Europe, one by one, in the process.

Walter Meyer