Symphony in C major

Bizet’s Symphony in C is another miracle of 19th century music. Like the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, it is the work of a composer no more than seventeen years old and, while it is less original than Mendelssohn’s teenage masterpiece, it is scarcely less accomplished and no less entertaining. Unfortunately, with the exception of Charles Gounod, his teacher at the Paris Conservatoire, none of Bizet’s contemporaries can have been aware of it. Perhaps because it was so clearly influenced by Gounod’s Symphony No.1 in D, which the student composer had recently arranged for piano, the score was quietly put away and never performed during his lifetime.

The manuscript of the Symphony in C came to light again only 78 years later when Reynaldo Hahn, to whom it had been entrusted by Bizet’s widow, presented it to the Paris Conservatoire. It was then brought to the attention of Felix Weingartner, who undertook to conduct the first performance in Switzerland in 1935 - by which time, with Gounod’s orchestral music long out of fashion, the audience was far more likely to recognise the extraordinary brilliance of Bizet’s score than its kinship with the Symphony in D major.

Any comparison made now, when the Symphony in C has such a secure place in the repertoire, would probably not find in Gounod’s favour. In spite of the undeniable fact that Bizet derived several of his ideas from the earlier work, his youthful vitality and melodic inspiration are irresistible. If the former quality predominates in the hyperactive material at the beginning of the Allegro vivo, the oboe’s lyrical second-subject melody is a seductive example of the latter and is all that is needed to offset the rhythmic energy prevailing elsewhere.

In the Adagio the emphasis, not unconventionally, is the other way round. Lyricism predominates here - most memorably in the nostalgic A minor main theme, introduced as though by special request from woodwind colleagues by a solo oboe, but no less expressively in the gently aspiring line extended by violins in C major over a pizzicato accompaniment on lower strings. A textural contrast is offered in the middle section by a playful fugato on an academic version of the oboe theme, but only to make the reappearance of that melody in its original form all the more desirable.

There is more melodic charm in the scherzo. In the outer sections violins in octaves refreshingly sustain a shapely legato line in the midst of rhythmic boisterousness and, in the central trio section, woodwind instruments transform the scherzo theme into a country-dance tune over an appropriately rustic drone on cellos and violas.

The finale is a study in perpetual motion. Its energy is stimulated in the first place by the pattering semiquaver figuration of the opening bars; it is then converted into an expression of high spirits in the woodwind, temporarily subverted by a more lyrical second subject, thoroughly diverted in a brilliantly contrived sequence of modulations in the development section and eventually restored to the original key for the recapitulation and an incontrovertibly conclusive coda.

If Bizet’s Symphony in C had been performed at the time of its composition it would probably not have achieved the popularity it enjoys today. It was written, in just a few weeks, towards the end of 1855, round about the composer’s 17th birthday and not long after he had completed a piano-duet arrangement of Gounod’s Symphony No.1 in D. Its debt to Gounod’s example would have been so clear in Paris at the time that - in spite of ample evidence of teenage genius comparable to Schubert’s or Mendelssohn’s - it might well have been condemned as just another example of a Conservatoire student imitating his composition teacher. On the advice of Gounod himself perhaps, or through natural modesty, Bizet quietly put the score away and forgot about it.

The manuscript did not come to light again until 1933 when Reynaldo Hahn, to whom it had been entrusted by Bizet’s widow, presented it to the Paris Conservatoire. It was then brought to the attention of Felix Weingartner, who undertook to conduct the first performance in Switzerland in 1935 - by which time, with Gounod’s orchestral music long out of fashion, the audience was far more likely to recognise the extraordinary brilliance of Bizet’s score than its kinship with the Symphony in D major.

While it is an undeniable fact that Bizet derived several of his ideas from the earlier work, his youthful vitality and melodic inspiration are irresistible. If the former quality predominates in the hyperactive material at the beginning of the Allegro vivo, the oboe’s lyrical second-subject melody is a seductive example of the latter and is all that is needed to offset the rhythmic energy prevailing elsewhere.

In the Adagio the emphasis, not unconventionally, is the other way round. Lyricism predominates here - most memorably in the nostalgic main theme, introduced as though by special request from woodwind colleagues by a solo oboe, though no less expressively in the gently aspiring line extended by violins over a pizzicato accompaniment on lower strings. A textural contrast is offered in the middle section by a playful fugato on an academic version of the oboe theme, but only to make the reappearance of that melody in its original form all the more desirable.

There is more melodic charm in the Allegro vivace scherzo. In the outer sections violins in octaves refreshingly sustain a shapely legato line in the midst of rhythmic boisterousness and, in the central trio section, woodwind instruments transform the scherzo theme into a country-dance tune over an appropriately rustic drone on cellos and violas.

The finale is a study in perpetual motion, its energy stimulated in the first place by the pattering semiquaver figuration of the opening bars. It is then converted into an expression of high spirits in the woodwind, temporarily subverted by a more lyrical second subject, thoroughly diverted in a brilliantly contrived sequence of modulations in the development section and eventually restored to the original key for the recapitulation and an incontrovertibly conclusive coda.