Musical Performance

Nineteenth-century theatre-goers liked lavish incidental music, and to provide this most theatres had pit bands, ranging from two or three players to full orchestras. Writing music for plays financed many composers‘ lives. L’Arlésienne (`The Girl from Arles’) was a tragedy by the Provençal writer Alphonse Daudet, first performed in Paris in 18 72.

Bizet was asked to write the incidental music : a dozen numbers, ranging from a few mood-setting bars to preludes and interludes lasting several minutes. He had an orchestra of twenty-six, and the management requested `Provençal musical styles’ to match Daudet’s Southern dialect.

Daudet’s play is long forgotten, but Bizet subsequently worked the best numbers from his music into two orchestral suites, and these are now among his most popular, most tuneful works. The movements range from folk dances (the swaggering Prelude to Suite No. 1, the famous Farandole from Suite No. 2) to sound-pictures of the countryside, love scenes and church bells ringing out on Sunday morning. Suite No. 1 (Prelude, Minuet, Adagietto, Carillon) is better known than Suite No. 2, but conductors often cheat and add the best movements of Suite No. 2 (especially the final Farandole).

BIZET Georges Bizet (18 3 8-7 5) was a musical prodigy, beginning his career as concert pianist and prize-winning composer at the age of eleven. His ambition was to succeed in the theatre, and all his life, while supporting himself by hack work (arranging other people’s music for publishers, copying scores), he planned, wrote and rewrote operas of every kind, from a tragedy about Ivan the Terrible to frothy farce. Only a few projects actually reached the stage, and all were flops. The last and biggest disaster was Carmen in 187 5 — and Bizet died soon afterwards.

BIZET^‘S MUSIC Bizet admired Rossini, and imitated his perky scoring and penchant for a good tune. He envied the heavyweights of tragic opera, and tried to write sombre, emotion-racked music in grandest style. He succeeded with the lighter side, and (except in Carmen) failed with tragedy. He said bitterly that he was ‘too facile’, but the world has ever since been grateful for his unfailing zest and flair: the light thing done to perfection, every time.

Now TRY Bizet, Overture to Doctor Miracle; Symphony in C. Grieg, Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. Edward German, Henry VIII Suite.

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