L’Arlésienne Suite

Prélude

Menuet

Adagietto

Carillon

When L’Arlésienne, a play by Alphonse Daudet with incidental music by Georges Bizet, was first performed in Paris in 1872 it was a flop. A disaster for the playwright, it wasn’t so bad for the composer, who had the bright idea of arranging four of the most tuneful instrumental pieces for performance in the concert hall. It was an instant success.

The most extended movement in the suite is the Prélude which, as befits a play set around Arles, begins with a series of four variations on an old Provençal carol “March of the Kings.” A suddenly chilling intervention of minor harmonies and a short pause precede the introduction of two of Daudet’s main characters - L’Innocent (or Simpleton) represented by a poignant saxophone solo, and his brother Frédéri, whose hopeless love for l’Arlésienne (the Girl from Arles) is reflected in an expressive melody passionately developed by the strings.

The Menuet is an entracte between the third and fourth acts of the play, where it is more accurately described as a Valse-Menuet: if the outer sections can be described as a rustic kind of minuet the smoothly flowing middle section is nothing but a waltz. The short Adagietto, beautifully scored for muted strings, was inspired by a touching scene in which two long-separated lovers reaffirm their devotion to each other. The last movement of Bizet’s suite, Carillon, is a combination of two pieces from the original score, a celebration stirringly motivated by an ostinato of tolling bells on horn and harp and nicely offset by a gentle siciliano for two flutes in the middle section.

Prélude

Menuet

Adagietto

Carillon

One peculiarity of Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne is its absentee title role: the Girl from Arles is neither seen nor heard from the beginning of the first act to the end of the last. Another peculiarity is that it cannot be performed without Bizet’s score, which is far more than incidental music in the ordinary sense: as well as the orchestral movements familiar from the two concert suites, there are six off-stage choruses and as many as fourteen pieces designed to played as an accompaniment to the dialogue. True melodrama though it was - with music and the spoken word intimately linked - the public didn’t much like L’Arlésienne on its initial production at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris in 1872 and it was taken off after twenty-one performances.

While the failure of L’Arlésienne was a disaster for Daudet, it wasn’t so bad for Bizet, who had the bright idea of arranging four of the most tuneful instrumental pieces for performance in the concert hall, where they proved to be an immediate and lasting success. The most extended movement is the Prélude which, as befits a play set around Arles, begins with a series of four variations on an old Provençal carol “March of the Kings.” A suddenly chilling intervention of minor harmonies and a short pause precede the introduction of two of Daudet’s main characters - L’Innocent (or Simpleton) represented by a poignant saxophone solo, and his brother Frédéri, whose hopeless love for the Girl from Arles is reflected in an expressive melody passionately developed by the strings.

The Menuet is an entracte between the third and fourth acts of the play, where it is more accurately described as a Valse-Menuet: if the outer sections can be described as a rustic kind of minuet the smoothly flowing middle section is nothing but a waltz. The short Adagietto, beautifully scored for muted strings, was inspired by a touching scene in which two long-separated lovers reaffirm their devotion to each other. The last movement of Bizet’s suite, Carillon, is a combination of two pieces from the original score, a celebration stirringly motivated by an ostinato of tolling bells on horn and harp and nicely offset by a gentle siciliano for two flutes in the middle section.

Prélude

Menuet

Adagietto

Carillon

Farandole

One peculiarity of Alphonse Daudet’s play L’Arlésienne is its absentee title role: the Girl from Arles is neither seen nor heard from the beginning of the first act to the end of the last. Another peculiarity is that it cannot be performed without Bizet’s score, which is far more than incidental music in the ordinary sense: as well as the orchestral movements familiar from the two concert suites, there are six off-stage choruses and as many as fourteen pieces designed to played as an accompaniment to the dialogue. True melodrama though it was - with music and the spoken word intimately linked - the public didn’t much like L’Arlésienne on its initial production at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris in 1872 and it was taken off after twenty-one performances.

While the failure of L’Arlésienne was a disaster for Daudet, it wasn’t so bad for Bizet, who had the bright idea of arranging four of the most tuneful instrumental pieces for performance in the concert hall, where they proved to be an immediate and lasting success. The most extended movement is the Prélude which, as befits a play set around Arles, begins with a series of four variations on an old Provençal carol “March of the Kings.” A suddenly chilling intervention of minor harmonies and a short pause precede the introduction of two of Daudet’s main characters - L’Innocent (or Simpleton) represented by a poignant saxophone solo, and his brother Frédéri, whose hopeless love for the Girl from Arles is reflected in an expressive melody passionately developed by the strings.

The Menuet is an entracte between the third and fourth acts of the play, where it is more accurately described as a Valse-Menuet: if the outer sections can be described as a rustic kind of minuet the smoothly flowing middle section is nothing but a waltz. The short Adagietto, beautifully scored for muted strings, was inspired by a touching scene in which two long-separated lovers reaffirm their devotion to each other. The last movement of Bizet’s suite, Carillon, is a combination of two pieces from the original score, a celebration stirringly motivated by an ostinato of tolling bells on horn and harp and nicely offset by a gentle siciliano for two flutes in the middle section.

Although the Farandole comes from a second L’Arlésienne suite compiled four years after the composer’s death by his friend and colleague Ernest Guiraud - who found himself so short of material that he had to resort to La jolie Fille de Perth for a minuet - it makes an effective conclusion here. Beginning with a recall of the “March of the Kings” from the Prélude it introduces another Provençal tune used in the original score, “Dance of the Mad Horse,” repeats them in alternation and finally, following Bizet’s example, puts the two together.

Gerald Larner©