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Chasse fantastique
Composition: by 5-9-1865, when Bizet performed it. It was announced as Chasse à courre, pièce inédite symphonique, but the title was changed before publication early in 1866. The piece may have been modelled on Stephen Heller’s La Chasse: étude caractéristique, op. 29, published in 1842, also in 6/8 in E♭, which was in Bizet's library. Its dedication suggests that it may also have been a response to Marmontel's dedication to Bizet in 1865 of one of his 24 Grandes Études, op. 85. In 1887 Ernest Guiraud published a Chasse fantastique, poème symphonique for orchestra in G minor.
Self-borrowing (from): The four-bar tune at bars 47-50 was taken from ‘Quand la sainte Olga’ at bar 18 in no. 14 of Ivan IV.
Autograph score: not known
Dedicatee: Antoine-François Marmontel (1816–98), professor of piano at the Conservatoire since 1848 and Bizet's piano teacher.
Performance: Bizet, in the salons Pleyel-Wolff, 5-9-1865.
- Par Setrak, 1985
- Julia Severus, 2009
- Curtiss 163, 466
- Dean 58, 147, 264
- Wright 35
- Lacombe 108, 343-44
- Le Ménestrel, 17-9-1865, p. 332-33.
- Marmontel, Symphonistes et virtuoses (Paris, 1880), p. 262