Symphony in C (Bizet)
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The Symphony in C is an early work by the French composer
Georges Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', whi ...
. According to '' Grove's Dictionary'', the symphony "reveals an extraordinarily accomplished talent for a 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 The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
under the composer
Charles Gounod Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (18 ...
, and was evidently a student assignment. Bizet showed no apparent interest in having it performed or published, and the piece was never played in his lifetime. He used certain material from the symphony in later works, however. There is no mention of the work in Bizet's letters, and it was unknown to his earlier biographers. His widow,
Geneviève Halévy Marie-Geneviève Raphaëlle Halévy-Bizet-Straus (26 February 1849 – 22 December 1926) was a French salonnière who was the wife of Georges Bizet. She inspired Marcel Proust as a model for the Duchesse de Guermantes and Odette de Crécy in ''À l ...
(1849–1926), gave the manuscript to
Reynaldo Hahn Reynaldo Hahn (; 9 August 1874 – 28 January 1947) was a Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor, music critic, and singer. He is best known for his songs – ''mélodies'' – of which he wrote more than 100. Hahn was born in Caracas b ...
, who passed it along with other papers to the archives of the conservatory library, where it was found in 1933 by
Jean Chantavoine Jean Chantavoine (17 May 1877 – 16 July 1952) was a French musicologist and biographer and the secretary general for the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique. Chantavoine was born in Paris. He published numerous books and article ...
. Soon thereafter, Bizet's first British biographer Douglas Charles Parker (1885–1970) showed the manuscript to the conductor
Felix Weingartner Paul Felix Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg (2 June 1863 – 7 May 1942) was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist. Life and career Weingartner was born in Zara, Dalmatia, Austria-Hungary (now Zadar, Croatia), to Austrian parents. ...
, who led the first performance in
Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...
, Switzerland, on 26 February 1935. The symphony was immediately hailed as a youthful masterpiece on a par with
Felix Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sy ...
's overture to ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a comedy written by William Shakespeare 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One subplot involves a conflict amon ...
'', written at about the same age, and quickly became part of the standard Romantic repertoire. It received its first recording in 1937, by the
London Philharmonic Orchestra The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony ...
under
Walter Goehr Walter Goehr (; 28 May 19034 December 1960) was a German composer and conductor. Biography Goehr was born in Berlin, where he studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outs ...
.Studio No. 1, Abbey Road">CHARM (Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music). London, Abbey Road Studios, Studio No. 1, Abbey Road
for HMV


Form

Written for a standard orchestra (without trombones), the work closely follows the classical symphonic form in four
movements Movement may refer to: Common uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Motion, commonly referred to as movement Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...
. The first and the last movement are in
sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical form, musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle ...
.


History


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 '' Sapho'' (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 .e. 1855/56/nowiki>, when I used to say "Sapho and the choruses from Ulysse are masterpieces", people laughed in my face. I was right" In 1855, with Gounod his principal mentor, Bizet wrote his first three major compositions: the opera '' La maison du docteur'', 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'' (''The Bloody Nun''), 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 ...
''. 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 at ounod's/nowiki> score ... made it clear that the young Bizet had copied all its most conspicuous features in his Symphony in C." There are, in fact, so many references,
parodies A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...
and quotations from Gounod in Bizet's work that it is likely the young composer was consciously paying homage to his celebrated teacher. His close involvement with Gounod's orchestral score in realising the two-piano transcription would have given Bizet the opportunity to explore many of its orchestral nuances and incorporate them into his own work and may explain why Bizet's first full-fledged symphonic work was such an unusually well-polished and well-orchestrated composition. As Bizet would later write to his former teacher "You were the beginning of my life as an artist. I spring from you. You are the cause, I am the consequence." This sentiment permeates the compositional spirit of the Symphony in C. All 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'' 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. It is applied similarly to choral music, where the whole section or choir is called to sing. M ...
chord and closing
codetta In music, a coda () (Italian for "tail", plural ''code'') is a passage that brings a piece (or a movement) to an end. It may be as simple as a few measures, or as complex as an entire section. In classical music The presence of a coda as a st ...
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 In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the c ...
as the development section, using an identical scoring in the order of entry. Both start sotto voce with
staccato Staccato (; Italian for "detached") is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation, it signifies a note of shortened duration, separated from the note that may follow by silence. It has been described by theorists and has appeared in music ...
articulation 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 In music, a pedal point (also pedal note, organ point, pedal tone, or pedal) is a sustained tone, typically in the bass, during which at least one foreign (i.e. dissonant) harmony is sounded in the other parts. A pedal point sometimes function ...
. 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 The piccolo ( ; Italian for 'small') is a half-size flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" the modern piccolo has similar fingerings as the standard transverse flute, but the so ...
,
harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orche ...
or
trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...
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 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 Procopio'' 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 ... is sensitivity/nowiki> 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 The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...
, the highest prize a young French composer could attain. As the noted musicologist Julien Tiersot observed in 1903:
In
9th-century The 9th century was a period from 801 ( DCCCI) through 900 ( CM) in accordance with the Julian calendar. The Carolingian Renaissance and the Viking raids occurred within this period. In the Middle East, the House of Wisdom was founded in Abba ...
/nowiki> 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 David Félicien-César David (13 April 1810 – 29 August 1876) was a French composer. Biography Félicien David was born in Cadenet, and began to study music at the age of five under his father, whose death when the boy was six left him an impoverish ...
, Henri Reber, 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, of which Bizet's Roma Symphony 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 ' (''The Pearl Fishers'') is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was premiered on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in ...
'' 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 The oboe ( ) is a type of double reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common oboe plays in the treble or soprano range. A ...
. As noted by Chevrier-Choudens, Bizet also used the second theme of the finale in Act I of '' Don Procopio''. Finally, since he was only 36 when he died, it is entirely possible that had he lived, Bizet might 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 Halévy Marie-Geneviève Raphaëlle Halévy-Bizet-Straus (26 February 1849 – 22 December 1926) was a French salonnière who was the wife of Georges Bizet. She inspired Marcel Proust as a model for the Duchesse de Guermantes and Odette de Crécy in ''À l ...
.


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 Weingartner Paul Felix Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg (2 June 1863 – 7 May 1942) was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist. Life and career Weingartner was born in Zara, Dalmatia, Austria-Hungary (now Zadar, Croatia), to Austrian parents. ...
, 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 Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions to musical form have led ...
,
Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his ra ...
,
Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositi ...
,
Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...
, Rossini, and
Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical ...
.By, among others, Jean Chantavoine, Paul Stefan and Martin Cooper It received its first recording on 26 November 1937, by the
London Philharmonic Orchestra The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony ...
under
Walter Goehr Walter Goehr (; 28 May 19034 December 1960) was a German composer and conductor. Biography Goehr was born in Berlin, where he studied with Arnold Schoenberg and embarked on a conducting career, before being forced as a Jew to seek employment outs ...
.


Adaptations

George Balanchine George Balanchine (; Various sources: * * * * born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze; ka, გიორგი მელიტონის ძე ბალანჩივაძე; January 22, 1904 (O. S. January 9) – April 30, 1983) was ...
made a ballet to the music, which he originally called ''Le Palais de Cristal'' and later simply '' Symphony in C'', first presented by the
Paris Opera Ballet The Paris Opera Ballet () is a French ballet company that is an integral part of the Paris Opera. It is the oldest national ballet company, and many European and international ballet companies can trace their origins to it. It is still regarded ...
in 1947.


References

Notes Bibliography * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

* {{Authority control Compositions by Georges Bizet
Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, '' Carmen'', which has become o ...
1855 compositions Compositions in C major
Bizet Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, '' Carmen'', which has become o ...