Everyone knows Bizet as the composer of Carmen, one of the most brilliantly successful operas of all time. But who knows the keyboard genius who gave us the Jeux d'enfants (Children's games) for piano duet? The orchestral colorist whose incidental music for Daudet's play L'Arlesienne is hummed by concert-goers around the world? The miniaturist whose songs are among the most evocative in the repertoire?
Bizet is full of surprises. Probably our very familiarity with Carmen has blinded us to the point where we ask no more from this many-sided artist. Yet there is a great deal more to appreciate in the work of this witty, dramatic, innovative talent who was given only thirty-six years to live. This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth, and it is appropriate to review Bizet's output, exploring some of the lesser-known corners of his creative world.
At his death in 1875, Bizet left nearly a hundred compositions, ranging in size and scale from entire operas (Ivan the Terrible, 1865; Djamileh, 1872) to unpublished piano miniatures. Yet it is in his songs, spanning his entire creative career, that we find him at his most charming and interesting. It was in these short melodies (the French equivalent of the German lieder) that he experimented with the painting of emotional states and exotic situations. Through them, we can peer over the shoulder, so to speak, of the opera composer in his laboratory.
The French Melodie
The origins of the French art song can be traced back to the art of the troubadours and trouveres, wandering minstrels who earned their livings at the sophisticated courts of medieval France. In some cases they wrote both the words and the music of their songs; in others, they merely composed melodies for the love poems of their aristocratic patrons, accompanying them on the lute. Already in the thirteenth century, with the emergence of the theme of l'amour courtois (courtly love), the character of modern French song was determined.
Solo song declined during the Renaissance but remerged as an important art form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Dictionnaire (1767), described the solo song as generally treating "quelque histoire amoureuse et souvent tragique" (a love story, and often an unhappy one). Describing the musical style, he said it should be: “written in a simple, touching style, with a somewhat antiquated flavor. No ornaments, nothing affected--a simple, natural rustic melody, which makes its effect of its own accord, without depending on the way in which it is sung. …One should need no more than a clear, carefully tuned voice, which pronounces the words well.”
This, then, was the point of departure for French song composers. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, France came to know many foreign composers, and French song incorporated their influence. Songs fashioned in the Italian manner, for example, showed a preoccupation with melody; there was less stress on finding an interesting or distinctive text or on fashioning a melody closely mirroring its mood and speech patterns. Accompaniment was usually restricted to simple arpeggios. Songs based on the German style, on the other hand, sought to make textual expression paramount; both the vocal line and piano accompaniment were composed to underline the meaning and mood of the words,
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