Symphony No. 1 in C major
Georges Bizet (1838–1875)
Composed: 1855. Première: 1935, Basle.
Bizet is long remembered, above all, as the composer of the opera Carmen, which became famous after his lifetime. When the young French composer Claude Debussy visited Piotr Tchaikovsky in Russia, Tchaikovsky took him to a production of Carmen. When Debussy visited Johannes Brahms in Vienna, Brahms took Debussy to a production of Carmen. Oddly, the Symphony No. 1 of Bizet was unknown to Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Debussy. The score had been lying dormant in the care of Bizet’s widow, Geneviève Halévy, who was none too careful with Bizet’s musical legacy. It is indeed a wonder that the Symphony survived intact, but it was mainly Bizet’s operatic manuscripts that were cannibalized by others. Finding no one interested in the score, she gave it to the composer Reynaldo Hahn, who was no great admirer of Bizet’s. The score ultimately wound up back in the custody of the Paris Conservatoire where it first took shape, still awaiting a performance. Without knowledge of the symphony, people simply assumed that Bizet was an indifferent student and that his gifts as a composer never manifested themselves during his youth. This picture of Bizet changed radically after the première of his Symphony No. 1, which took place 85 years after its composition.
Upon the première of the Symphony No. 1 in 1935 under the baton the great maestro Felix Weingartner, Bizet’s artistry was radically rethought, and sixty years after his death he was recognized as a youthful prodigy—all this on account of a symphony begun four days after his seventeenth birthday and completed the following month.
Three influences deserve mention when thinking about Bizet’s early years: his musical parents, his teacher Fromental Halévy, an acquaintance of Beethoven’s and the composer of La Juive and the composer Charles Gounod, whose opera Faust continues to be popular. While Halévy educated the young Bizet musically and intellectually, Gounod provided a compelling symphonic model for the young Bizet to surpass. Indeed, there is consensus that Bizet’s Symphony arose from Gounod’s Symphony No. 1 in D major. One might also be reminded of the earlier symphonies of Schubert from Bizet’s symphonic lyricism. But it is in Bizet’s exotic adagio and luminous scherzo that the sense of model composition dissolves.
The adagio’s chromaticism and serpentine melodies make it distinct from the charming but more conventional first movement. That this seventeen-year-old might compose Carmen is not so far-fetched. The scherzo is reminiscent of the prodigious achievements of the teen-aged Mozart and Mendelssohn. There is a lightness and a deftness that make the scherzo quite magical. The last movement retains these qualities of the scherzo only escalating their intensity to add sheer brilliance and virtuosity to the finale.
In his writings, Bizet often drew the distinction between what he called the natural genius like Mozart, and the rational genius like Beethoven. While he could hardly admire the rational genius more, it was the natural genius that he had the most sympathy. Indeed it is through a youthful work like the Symphony that Bizet’s natural genius that places Bizet in the company of other prodigies like Mozart and Mendelssohn.
Nocturnes for Orchestra
Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Composed: 1897–99
Any list of works that mark a watershed in the history of music during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries must include Debussy’s Nocturnes. There are no other works that sound like the two purely orchestral Nocturnes on this release. (There is a third Nocturne with chorus.) Debussy originally conceived the Nocturnes with a violin soloist in mind:
I am working at three Nocturnes for violin and orchestra…It is an experiment with the different combinations that can be obtained from one color—like a study in grey in painting.
But for this experiment, Debussy abandoned the solo violin and worked with just the orchestra. According to Debussy:
The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a…decorative sense. Therefore it is not meant to designate the usual form of the nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests. Nuages renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in grey tones lightly tinged with white. Fêtes gives us the vibrating atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision), which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains persistently the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust, participating in the cosmic rhythm.
Composers are not always the best interpreters of their music, but Debussy is spot on in his description. Nuages opens with a quartet of clarinets and bassoons playing in wide open intervals and then joined by the oboe, English horn and flute. The horns and harp lend an accent before any sound of strings is heard. The pace is never hurried or rushed, but achieves a dramatic intensity as the sounds pass by.
Fêtes could not be more different. It opens aggressively with strings and continues at a blazing pace. The procession led by muted brass and percussion is indeed a “fantastic vision” before the tempo picks up once again. As different as these two movements are, they form a pair by the sheer inventiveness and brilliance of Debussy’s sense of sound, tone and musical drama.
© Steven J. Cahn, 2010.
Steven J. Cahn is Program Annotator of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony. He is Associate Professor of Music Theory, College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati.
