Between the Symphonie sur un chant montagnard française (1886) and d'Indy's Symphony No. 2 in B flat—composed over 1902-1903—French music had been immeasurably enriched by Saint-Saëns' "Organ" Symphony (1886), Franck's Symphony in D (1886-1888), Lalo's Symphony in G (1886), Chausson's Symphony in B flat (1889-1890), three of Magnard's four symphonies, and Dukas' Symphony in C (1895-1896). D'Indy had, in those years, metamorphosed from a prominently promising young man to become a formidable presence in French musical life—composer of the Wagner-influenced operas Fervaal (1889-1893) and L'Étranger (1898-1901), animating spirit of the Société Nationale de Musique, director of the prestigious Schola Cantorum, and adamant opponent of the music of Debussy and Ravel. An outspoken defender of Tradition, d'Indy narrowed it to "organic" or "cyclic" form implicit in Beethoven's last works, made explicit in Franck's mature practice, and, by implication, to be perfected by d'Indy himself. Hence, the composition of his Second Symphony was dogged by arrière pensée. The sumptuous Symphony in C by his friend Dukas was a major statement, paying homage to Franck's chromaticism and love of modulation, but formally non-cyclic. D'Indy pointedly dedicated his Second Symphony to Dukas and, as he would do in the Piano Sonata (1907)—an "answer" to Dukas' great sonata (1899-1901)—he composed toward an ideal of formal organicism in which, allowing for the minimal relief of subsidiary material, the entire work would be generated by two germinal cells. The questioning first cell expresses Doubt or Evil, recalling the "Muss es sein?" motto opening Franck's symphony. Accordingly, the second cell is affirmative, a blazon of Good. D'Indy derives genuine lyric impetus from such unpromising origins —luminously scored and rhythmically supple—carrying one with the breezy buoyancy and angular gait that are part of his immense charm through an elaborate development to a glowing climax. The second movement has been read as a mourning piece for Chausson, killed in a bicycling accident in 1899, though its wistfulness and swaggering central section hardly support this. The third movement—nominally a scherzo with two trios—opens with the Vivarais folk song of which Dukas would make such haunting use in his opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1899-1906). The final movement adumbrates the struggle of light and darkness in a serpentine fugue leading to a grandiose chorale with the light triumphant. D'Indy conducted the premiere at a Société Nationale concert, May 17, 1904, and in 1905 with the Boston Symphony in Boston and on tour to Baltimore, New York, and Brooklyn.

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