Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season FINAL_BSO_Overture_May_June | Page 33
BERNSTEIN AND SHOSTAKOVICH
reader, and he was utterly captivated by
Auden’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poem,
which he discovered soon after its
publication in 1947. “From that moment,
the composition of a symphony…
acquired an almost compulsive quality,”
Bernstein remembered, “and I worked on
it steadily… in Taos, in Philadelphia, in
Richmond, Mass., in Tel Aviv, in planes,
in hotel lobbies.” The orchestration was
done in the midst of a tour with the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, during
which Bernstein conducted 25 concerts
in 28 days. As was to happen throughout
his life, the need to compose was already
in conflict with the demands of his
exploding conducting career.
Bernstein based his hybrid work closely
on the six-part format of the poem and its
focus on the conversations of three men
and a woman during a long, alcohol-fueled
night in a wartime New York City bar.
“The essential line of the poem (and of
the music) is a record of our difficult
search for faith. In the end, two of the
characters enunciate the recognition of
this faith… at the same time revealing
an inability to relate to it in their daily
lives, except through blind acceptance.”
Bernstein explained that “the conception
of a symphony with piano solo emerges
from the personal identification of myself
with the poem. In this sense, the pianist
provides an autobiographical protagonist,
set against an orchestral mirror.”
Appropriately, Bernstein himself played
the solo part at “Age of Anxiety”’s premiere
performance on April 8, 1949 with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted
by his mentor Serge Koussevitzky.
“Age of Anxiety” is an extremely
eclectic score in which Bernstein
mingled influences from many
composers he loved and frequently
conducted: Stravinsky, Shostakovich,
Britten, Brahms and Rachmaninoff
(for the virtuosic keyboard flights).
More personal were many borrowings
from his own earlier scores, as well as
the exhilarating piano jazz of the fifth
movement, “The Masque,” based on his
flair for improvising jazz at the keyboard.
Here are Bernstein’s own descriptions
of the Symphony’s six sections:
Part I:
“The Prologue finds four lonely characters,
a girl and three men, in a Third Avenue
bar, all of them insecure and trying,
through drink, to detach themselves from
their conflicts or, at best, to resolve them.
They…begin a kind of symposium on the
state of man. Musically, the Prologue is
a very short section consisting of a lonely
improvisation by two clarinets…followed
by a long descending scale which acts as a
bridge into the realm of the unconscious,
where most of the poem takes place.
“The Seven Ages. The life of man is
reviewed from the four personal points of
view. This is a series of variations, which
differ from conventional variations in that
they do not vary any one common theme.
Each variation seizes upon some feature
of the preceding one and develops it,
introducing…some counter-features upon
which the next variation seizes.…
“The Seven Stages. The variation form
continues for another set of seven, in which
the characters go on an inner symbolic
journey…leading back to a point of
comfort and security. The four try every
means…exchanging partners, and always
missing the objective. When they awaken
from this dream-odyssey, they are closely
united through a common experience (and
through alcohol) and begin to function as
one organism. This set of variations begins
to show activity and drive and leads to
a hectic, though inconclusive, close.”
Part II:
“The Dirge is sung by the four as they sit
in a cab en route to the girl’s apartment
for a nightcap. They mourn the loss of the
‘colossal Dad,’ the great leader who can
always give the right orders, find the right
solution, shoulder the mass responsibility
and satisfy the universal need for a
father-symbol. This section employs, in
a harmonic way, a twelve-tone row out
of which the main theme evolves. There
is a contrasting middle section of almost
Brahmsian romanticism, in which can
be felt the self-indulgent aspect of this
strangely pompous lamentation.
“The Masque finds the group in the girl’s
apartment, weary, guilty, determined to
have a party, each one afraid of spoiling the
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M AY–J U N 2018 / OV E R T U R E
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