116

Ouverture

524 bars

petite flûte, flûte, 2 hautbois, 2 clarinettes, 2 bassons, 4 cors, 2 trompettes, 3 trombones, ophicléide, timbales, cordes

Composition: This work has been assigned to the period 1855–56 on the grounds of its kinship with the Symphony no. 1, but there is no documentary support for that dating apart from the similarity of the paper of the autograph and Gounod’s reference to an overture (perhaps not this one) in August 1861. It remained unnoticed until Chantavoine's article of 1933, which led to its first performance in 1938 on the hundredth anniversary of Bizet's birth.

Autograph score: F-Pn MS. 424, gift of Reynaldo Hahn. 30-stave paper, 353 x 272 mm., 18 f., 34 p. of music.

title page, music f. 1r–17v, 2 blanks. At the head of the first page of music: 1ère ouverture, and in another hand: N.B. Supprimez l’ophycleide et les tromb. à l’unisson. Eight bars are crossed out after bar 101, and seventeen bars after bar 490.

Autograph part: F-Pn MS 479A, gift of M. Sibilat. Violons I part, bars 1-21, crossed out, in among a large collection of mostly infantile exercises.

Printed score:

pl. no.:

UE 13580L

pages:

title page, orchestra list, music 1–56

date:

8-1972

copies:

F-Pn G.17515

F-Pn Vma 2578

D-Mbs