Along with the Broadway-style music of West Side Story or Candide, Bernstein has three symphonies – with programmatic content – Jeremiah, Age of Anxiety and Kaddish (provoked by the Kennedy assassination). Symphony No. 2 was inspired by Whiston Hugh Auden’s remarkable poem of the same name (The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue). When the poem appeared in 1947, it not only failed to make an impression but, on the contrary, evoked the description “failure” from critics in The Times Literary Supplement. Just a few months after that, Auden won a Pulitzer Prize (1948) for it. Joseph Brodsky called it a “transatlantic Horatio”; Thomas Eliot was impressed. Bernstein perceived the work as “one of the most shattering examples of pure virtuosity “. The poem, which is rather voluminous in its 80-page content, reflects the drama of his contemporaries, the post-World War II period, the real and emotional devastation, the decay of manners, the question of normality and human oddities, the wandering in the wake of it all, and the general conclusion about the only saving power of faith. Auden’s poem suggests the atheistic pressures of existence and the insight of faith. In fact, the idea for a work based on Auden came from the composer’s friend Richard Adams Romney in his letter of 25 July 1947, who suggested that he “try” something based on the poem “Age of Anxiety”. The poem, which is rather voluminous in its 80-page content, reflects the drama of his contemporaries, the post-World War II period, the real and emotional devastation, the decay of manners, the question of normality and human oddities, the wandering in the wake of it all, and the general conclusion about the only saving power of faith. Auden’s poem suggests the atheistic pressures of existence and the insight of faith. In fact, the idea for a work based on Auden came from the composer’s friend Richard Adams Romney in his letter of 25 July 1947, who suggested that he “try” something based on the poem “Age of Anxiety”. Bernstein confirms that the subject of the “difficult and problematic search for faith” has long interested him. Having written the symphony in very short order, he dedicated it to Koussevitzky, who in turn conducted the premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 8 April 1949, with the composer playing the keyboard part. Soon thereafter, choreographer Jerome Robbins staged a ballet based on excerpts from the work, premiering in New York.

In 1965 Bernstein edited the score due to – as he put it – a literal adherence to the plot, form and imagery in the poem. The composer added a piano cadenza and revised the finale.

The plot of the poem and the symphony begins with four lonely strangers, three men and a woman, Malin, Quant, Emble and Rosetta, who meet in a New York military bar and spend the evening contemplating on human existence. In the style of a “baroque eclogue” (a pastoral poem in dialogue form), the characters speak in long monologues, with little distinction between the individual voices.

It is divided into six parts: In the “Prologue” the characters are introduced; in the “Seven Ages” they gather in a saloon “for a drink” and discuss human life, dividing it into seven levels – from childhood to death; in the “Seven Stages”, already half drunk, in the trance of their dreams, they indulge in a symbolic search for original happiness; in the second part, in “The Memorial Service,” the loss of the “father figure” is lamented; “The Mask,” presents a party until late in Rosetta’s apartment, where the fiery love between Rosetta and Emble does not develop; and “Epilogue,” in which all longings are sobered, the dawn breaks, and each of the characters returns to reality alone again.

In 2018, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the composer, the Second Symphony was presented the most – 183 times by 85 orchestras, 50 pianists in 28 countries in Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas.

After Auden sparked so much interest in himself, around 1950 he wrote for Igor Stravinsky the libretto for his opera The Rake’s Progress; Elegy for Young Lovers (1961) and Basarides for Hans Werner Henze.

In the same literary supplement in The Times in which Auden’s poem was disowned nearly 70 years ago, a text by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. appeared to reflect not only the poet’s postwar times but also today:

“We look upon our epoch as a time of troubles, an age of anxiety. The grounds of our civilization, of our certitude, are breaking up under our feet, and familiar ideas and institutions vanish as we reach for them, like shadows in the falling dusk.”