Symphony in C (Bizet) edit
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Symphony in C (Bizet) edit
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The Symphony in C is a symphony by the French composer Georges Bizet. According to Grove's Dictionary, "In quality and craftsmanship it has few rivals and perhaps no superior among the work of composers of such tender years". 1
Bizet started work on the symphony on 29 October 1855, four days after turning 17, and finished it a month later.2 It was written during his time as a student of Charles Gounod at the Paris Conservatoire, and was evidently a student assignment.3 It seems that Bizet had no interest in having it performed or published, although he did use certain material in later works. Bizet's widow gave the manuscript to Reynaldo Hahn, who deposited it in the archives of the conservatory library4, where it was discovered in 1933 by D.C. Parker (1885-1970), Bizet's first British biographer. 56 There is no mention of the work in Bizet's letters, and it was unknown to his earlier biographers. Parker showed the manuscript to Felix Weingartner, who conducted the first performance in Basel, Switzerland on 26 February 1935. It was immediately hailed as a junior masterwork on a par with Felix Mendelssohn's overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, written at about the same age, and a welcome addition to the Romantic repertoire. It received its first recording in 1936, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Walter Goehr.
The movements are:
It is written for a standard orchestra, without trombones. The symphony has been warmly and enthusiastically received since its premier and within a short period had been widely performed.73 The musicologist John W. Klein, who attended its London premier, found the work "enchanting" and "charming," a view that has been widely echoed since.8 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, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Rossini, and Beethoven.9. Above all else, however, the symphony bears close stylistic resemblance to the first symphony of Bizet's influential mentor and teacher Gounod, first performed nine months earlier and which Bizet had arranged for two pianos.34 The fanfares, sequential development, fugato in the slow movement, Pedal point pedal-point bass in the Trio, and the miniature coda of the finale are all elements taken directly from Gounod's D major symphony.310 However, Bizet’s symphony surpasses Gounod's work, showing a precocious grasp of harmonic language and design. Since it has resurfaced, however, Bizet's Symphony in C has far outshone Gounod's work in the repertoire. Present-day listeners may discern a similarity to music of Franz Schubert, whose work was little known in France at the time the symphony was written.
Bizet re-used certain motifs from the symphony in later works.11 The melodic formula of the main theme of the slow movement, played on the oboe, reappears in Les pêcheurs de perles (the introduction to Nadir's air "De mon amie") and in the trio of the Minuet from L'Arlésienne, in both cases again played by the oboe. The second theme of the finale was re-used in Act I of Don Procopio. 1
George Balanchine choreographed a ballet set to the symphony, which he originally called Le Palais de Cristal, and later simply Symphony in C, first presented by the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947.