Symphony in C (Bizet)
Encyclopedia
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
. According to Grove's Dictionary
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...
, the symphony "reveals an extraordinarily accomplished talent for an 17-year-old student, in melodic invention, thematic handling and orchestration." Bizet started work on the symphony on 29 October 1855, four days after turning 17, and finished it roughly a month later. It was written while he was studying at the Paris Conservatoire
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
under the composer Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
, and was evidently a student assignment. Bizet showed no apparent interest in having it performed or published, and while he used certain material from the symphony in later works, the piece was never played in his lifetime. There is no mention of the work in Bizet's letters, and it was unknown to his earlier biographers. His widow, Geneviève Halévy (1849–1926), gave the manuscript to Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic and diarist. Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie....
, who left it along with other papers to the archives of the conservatory library, where it was found in 1933 by Jean Chantavoine
Jean Chantavoine
Jean Chantavoine was a French musicologist and biographer and the secretary general for the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique...
. Soon thereafter, Bizet's first British biographer Douglas Charles Parker (1885–1970) showed the manuscript to the conductor Felix Weingartner
Felix Weingartner
Paul Felix von Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.-Biography:...
, who led the first performance in Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
on 26 February 1935.
The symphony was immediately hailed as a youthful masterpiece on a par with Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, written at about the same age, and quickly became part of the standard Romantic repertoire
Romantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
. It received its first recording on 26 November 1937, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
under Walter Goehr
Walter Goehr
Walter Goehr was a German composer and conductor.Goehr was born in Berlin where studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outside Germany, while working for Berlin Radio in 1932. He was invited to become music director for...
.
Background
The symphony is widely assumed to have been a student assignment, written toward the end of Bizet's nine years of study at the Conservatoire de Paris. At the Conservatoire, Bizet had come increasingly under the influence of Charles Gounod, whose works in the first half of the 1850s—including SaphoSapho (Gounod)
Sapho is a 3-act opera by Charles Gounod to a libretto by Émile Augier which was premiered by the Paris Opéra at the Salle Le Peletier on 16 April 1851. It was presented only 9 times in its initial production, but was a succès d'estime for the young composer, with the critics praising Act 3 in...
(1851), Ulysse (1852) and the Symphony No. 1 in D major (1855)—had a strong impact on the young composer. As Bizet would later write of this period: "Fifteen years ago
La maison du docteur
La maison du docteur is an opera comique in one act by Georges Bizet with a French libretto by Henry Boitteaux. Some music scholars assert that the opera was composed in 1852 while others believe that is was written in 1855. Either way the composition is the first opera written by Bizet...
, an overture, and the Symphony in C. A year before Bizet started to compose the Symphony, Gounod had written his own first Symphony (in D), composed at the end of 1854 in the wake of a tepid response to his opera La nonne sanglante
La nonne sanglante
La nonne sanglante , is a five-act opera by Charles Gounod to a libretto by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne. Written between 1852 and 1854, it was first produced on 18 October 1854 at the Salle Le Peletier by the Paris Opéra. It received 11 performances between October and November 1854...
. Gounod's Symphony in D proved a popular work, receiving at least eight performances in Paris alone within the space of a year. Bizet was subsequently engaged with writing a transcription of the work for two pianos, one of a number of commissions to transcribe Gounod's work Bizet accepted to earn extra income. This proximity to his mentor's work emerges in the close stylistic resemblance of Bizet's symphony with Gounod's; it may also explain why Bizet chose not to publish his symphony.
Similarities with Gounod's Symphony in D
The numerous stylistic, orchestral, melodic and harmonic similarities between the Gounod and Bizet symphonies make it clear that Bizet was emulating and, in certain cases, directly quoting his teacher. As Howard Shanet, who revived Gounod's symphony with the Columbia University Orchestra in 1955, observed, "the first glance atAll four movements of Bizet's symphony employ devices found in the earlier Gounod piece. The two inner movements are strikingly similar in form, rhythm and melodic shape.
First movement
Like Gounod, Bizet bookends the opening movement with an opening tutti
Tutti
Tutti is an Italian word literally meaning all or together and is used as a musical term, for the whole orchestra as opposed to the soloist...
chord and closing codetta
Coda (music)
Coda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end. Technically, it is an expanded cadence...
that are essentially parodic in form. In two passages, at measures 86ff and 141ff Bizet quotes directly from Gounod, measures 119ff and mm. 331ff. (See illustration.)
Second movement
Bizet draws very closely from Gounod's Allegretto moderato in the Symphony in D. Like Gounod, Bizet composed a small fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
as the development section, using an identical scoring in the order of entry. Both start sotto voce
Dynamics (music)
In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic or functional . The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics...
with staccato
Staccato
Staccato is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration and separated from the note that may follow by silence...
articulation
Articulation (music)
In music, articulation refers to the musical direction performance technique which affects the transition or continuity on a single note or between multiple notes or sounds.- Types of articulations :...
and share a closely similar phrase shape. And in both works, the first theme is brought back in the recapitulation over passages in the strings that recall the fugal development.
Third movement
Although quite different in tempo and character, Bizet's scherzo makes several references to the Gounod's scherzo in the trio section. Both are variants of the opening theme and both are played on the woodwinds over a string pedal-point.
Final Movement
Beyond a general thematic sympathy between the two finales, Bizet directly imitates Gounod's closing phrase in his own work, drawing on the same rhythmic shape and architecture to create a miniature coda.
Finally, the scoring for both works is identical: a smaller, classical orchestra (omitting, for instance, piccolo
Piccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, harp
Harp
The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
or trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s).
Although Bizet’s symphony was closely drawing on Gounod's work, critics view it as a much superior composition, showing a precocious and sophisticated grasp of harmonic language and design, as well as originality and melodic inspiration. Since it has resurfaced, Bizet's Symphony in C has far outshone Gounod's work in the repertoire, both in terms of performance and numbers of recordings.
Suppression
That the Symphony was never even mentioned in Bizet's extensive correspondence, let alone published in his lifetime, has given rise to speculation as to the composer's motives in suppressing the work. According to a 1938 correspondence from Bizet's publisher,Antoine de Choudens, founder of the Choudens Publishing House and Bizet's editor, had in his possession Bizet's youthful symphony. If he never published it, this was because Bizet himself was opposed to the idea, having introduced into his work Don ProcopioDon ProcopioDon Procopio is a two-act opera buffa by Georges Bizet with an Italian libretto completed in 1859, and first performed in 1906.-Background:Bizet spent three years in Italy, 1857 to 1860, as winner of the Prix de Rome...
an excerpt from the symphony he thought suitable for this theatre piece. This latter was published by Choudens in 1905. Further, the widow of G. Bizet, respecting the wishes of her husband, confirmed her husband's intentions to the publisher. (signed) Chevrier-Choudens
This explanation, however, was rejected by Shanet, who instead argued that Bizet was worried that his own work was too similar to Gounod's:
The probable reason for Bizet's unwillingness to publish the Symphony in C was ...[his sensitivity] about his imitation of certain features of Gounod's Symphony in D. The very success of Gounod's piece, which must have stimulated the young man to copy some of its methods, would later have
deterred him from having his own symphony performed or published. For it must be remembered that the Gounod symphony was then one of the most famous French works of its kind, and that Bizet had borrowed from it precisely those features that everyone else had noticed and admired.
Since no evidence exists one way or the other, Bizet's motives must remain conjectural. However, the symphonic genre was not a popular one for French composers in the second half of the nineteenth century, who instead concentrated most of their large-scale efforts on theatrical and operatic music. Gounod himself observed "There is only one way for a composer who desires to make a real name - the operatic stage." This bias against formal symphonic writing was also entrenched within the culture of the Paris Conservatory, which considered the symphony to be (as in the case of Bizet's own) a mere student exercise on the path toward submissions for the Prix de Rome
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
, the highest prize a young French composer could attain. As the noted musicologist Julien Tiersot
Julien Tiersot
Julien Tiersot born in Bourg-en-Bresse on 5 July 1857 and died in Paris on 10 August 1936, was a French musicologist, composer and a pioneer in ethnomusicology.- Biography :...
observed in 1903:
In[19th-century] France the symphony was considered a scholastic exercise, so much so that for a long time it appeared only with those competing to be "sent to Rome." It seems that a well-written symphony was the supreme test of the talent of young composers crowned by the Academy. ... But it clearly had no greater importance nor a higher artistic meaning in the eyes of the judges.... Gounod, Félicien DavidFélicien-César DavidFélicien-César David was a French composer.-Biography:Félicien David was born in Cadenet , France, and began to study music at five under his father, whose early death however left him an impoverished orphan...
, Henri ReberNapoléon Henri ReberNapoléon Henri Reber was a French composer.He studied with Anton Reicha and Jean François Lesueur, wrote chamber music, and set to music the new poems of the best French poets...
, they too, in their lost moments, wrote symphonies, works that did justice to the purity of their intentions, but none of which has remained alive.
Instead, as Tiersot himself noted, French symphonic efforts gravitated toward the symphonic suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
, of which Bizet's misnamed Roma Symphony
Roma Symphony (Bizet)
The Symphony in C "Roma" is the second of Georges Bizet's symphonies. Unlike his first symphony, also in C major, which was written quickly at the age of 17, Roma was written over an eleven-year span, between the ages of 22 and 33 . Bizet was never fully satisfied with it, subjecting it to a...
was a pioneering example. Indeed, where his youthful Symphony was written in less than a month, the Roma "Symphony" occupied Bizet for years, and he remained at his death unsatisfied with the work. Unlike the Symphony in C, Bizet tried to infuse his Roma Symphony with more gravitas and thematic weight. Of the two works, it is Bizet's student composition which has garnered much more critical praise.
It may also have been, as hinted at by the 1938 correspondence from Chevrier-Choudens, that Bizet intended to mine his student effort for material in what he saw as more serious compositions (including, possibly, two aborted symphonies written while in Rome). The melodic theme of the slow movement reappears in Les pêcheurs de perles
Les pêcheurs de perles
Les pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was first performed on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in its initial run...
as the introduction to Nadir's air "De mon amie." And Bizet recycled the same melody in the trio of the Minuet from L'Arlésienne. In both cases, Bizet retained his original scoring for oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
. As noted by Chevrier-Choudens, Bizet also used the second theme of the finale in Act I of Don Procopio
Don Procopio
Don Procopio is a two-act opera buffa by Georges Bizet with an Italian libretto completed in 1859, and first performed in 1906.-Background:Bizet spent three years in Italy, 1857 to 1860, as winner of the Prix de Rome...
. Finally, since he was only 36 when he died, it is entirely possible that had he lived, Bizet may have decided later to publish the work. Whatever the case, the work remained unpublished, unplayed and unknown at Bizet's death, passing into the possession of his widow, Geneviève Halevy.
Rediscovery and posthumous popularity
Although Bizet's first biographer, Douglas Charles Parker, is widely credited with bringing the symphony to public attention, it was the French musicologist Jean Chantavoine who first revealed the existence of the work, in an article published in the periodical Le Ménestrel in 1933. Parker, alerted to its existence, informed the Austrian conductor Felix WeingartnerFelix Weingartner
Paul Felix von Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.-Biography:...
, who gave the highly successful premiere in Basel in 1935. The work was published the same year by Universal-Edition.
Within a short time of its publication, the work had been widely performed. The musicologist John W. Klein, who attended its London premiere, found the work "enchanting" and "charming," a view that has been generally echoed since. Although a student assignment, many musicologists find the symphony shows a precocious grasp of harmonic language and design, a sophistication which has invited comparisons with Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
, Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
, Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
, Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
, Rossini, and Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
.
Form
Written for a standard orchestra (without trombones), the work closely follows the classical symphonic form in four movements:- Allegro vivo
- Andante. Adagio
- Allegro vivace
- Finale. Allegro vivace
Adaptations
George BalanchineGeorge Balanchine
George Balanchine , born Giorgi Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to a Georgian father and a Russian mother, was one of the 20th century's most famous choreographers, a developer of ballet in the United States, co-founder and balletmaster of New York City Ballet...
made a ballet to the music, which he originally called Le Palais de Cristal and later simply Symphony in C
Symphony in C (ballet)
Symphony in C, originally titled Le Palais de Cristal, is a ballet made by New York City Ballet co-founder and balletmaster George Balanchine to Bizet's Symphony in C , which he wrote at the age of 17 while studying with Charles Gounod at the Paris Conservatory...
, first presented by the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947.
External links
- Score at the International Music Score Library ProjectInternational Music Score Library ProjectThe International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...