Both are in suits and ties and smoking, Auden holding his cigarette Bette-Davis style and looking hard at Bernstein, whoвЂ™s staring back as if to say, вЂњYouвЂ™re telling me my music has nothing to do with your poem?вЂќ A photo of the two men accompanying the YouTube posting of the original 1950 Columbia recording shows them with what appears to be the score spread out in front of them. New to both works, I read the poem while listening to the music, and found the two so compatible it seemed possible that Auden had written The Age of Anxiety after listening to BernsteinвЂ™s symphony (Auden reportedly thought they had nothing to do with one another). 2вЂќ on April 8, 1949, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by BernsteinвЂ™s mentor Serge Koussevitzky, with Bernstein himself playing the piano solo, he says that вЂњAudenвЂ™s fascinating and hair-raising Eclogue had already begun to affect me lyrically when I first read it in the summer of 1947.вЂќ From that moment, the composition of the work it inspired took on вЂњan almost compulsive quality,вЂќ with the conception emerging from his вЂњextreme personal identificationвЂќ with the poem. In his program note for the debut performance of вЂњThe Age of Anxiety, Symphony No. There they drink some more and dance a bit until the two older gents drift home and the younger one pledges undying love to Rosetta before crashing out on her bed.вЂќД«ernstein found the work anything but dull. In real terms they get talking at the bar, grab a booth together, get plastered and stagger back to RosettaвЂ™s place. Over six sections - a prologue, a life-story, a dream-quest, a dirge, a masque, and an epilogue - they meditate on their lives, their hopes, their losses, and on the human condition. The strangers who meet each other in a New York bar are вЂњMalin, a Canadian airman Quant, a world-weary clerk Rosetta, a buyer for a department-store and Emble, a young naval recruit. Eliot (AudenвЂ™s вЂњbest work to dateвЂќ) with one in the Times Literary Supplement (вЂњhis one dull book, his one failureвЂќ). The most succinct summation of Age of Anxiety IвЂ™ve found is Glyn MaxwellвЂ™s article in the ApGuardian, which begins by pairing a quote from T.S. AudenвЂ™s poetry, which until a few days ago was confined to anthology pieces like вЂњSeptember 1, 1939,вЂќ a poem he has disavowed. The same could be said about my knowledge of W.H.

IвЂ™m glad to hear itвЂ™s by Leonard Bernstein, since 2018 is his centennial, and my connection with his music doesnвЂ™t go much beyond the songs from West Side Story.

ItвЂ™s an orchestral work from the 20th century featuring a pianist playing hard, fast, frenzied rhythms suggestive not of anxiety so much as of some counter-force, like the urban energy of a night club where dancers are frantically вЂњtripping the light fantasticвЂќ to distract themselves from impending doom. Seven decades later IвЂ™m in the kitchen rinsing the dinner dishes and listening to WWFM on the Bose Wave when an announcer mentions вЂњThe Age of Anxiety.вЂќ HeвЂ™s referring to the intriguing piece of music that was playing when I turned on the radio. Every morning itвЂ™s the same ordeal, with just a hint of the the addictive richness of false hope before the super-caffeinated reality hits you.Д«etween July 1944 and November 1946 when Auden was writing The Age of Anxiety (1947), his feelings about opening the Times every morning might have been expressed less politely, more in the tone of the poemвЂ™s prologue about the breaking down of вЂњthe historical processвЂќ in war-time when вЂњeverybody is reduced to the anxious status of a shady character or a displaced personвЂќ and вЂњeven the most prudent become worshippers of chance.вЂќ Every morning you feel small stirrings of hope that the taste will mellow down to something closer to the Obama latte flavor you fondly like to think it used to have. In mid-September 2018 opening the Times is like the first jarring swallow of a cup of gruesomely strong coffee you canвЂ™t stop drinking. One source of unpleasantness at that moment in history was Richard Nixon, who was into the before-the-fall fall of his second term. ItвЂ™s never very pleasant in the morning to open The New York TimesДЄ uden was speaking in the fall of 1972, a year before he died in Vienna on September 28, 1973.

Auden age of anxiety poem