Known for one of the world's most popular operas, Carmen, Georges Bizet deserves attention as well for other works of remarkable melodic charm. Many of his works received cool receptions on their premieres but are now considered central to the repertory of classical music.

Bizet was born in Paris on October 25, 1838, and grew up in a happy, musical family that encouraged his talents. He learned to read music at the same time he learned to read letters, and equally well. Entering the Paris Conservatory before he was ten, he earned first prize in solfège within six months, a first prize in piano in 1852, and eventually, the coveted Prix de Rome in 1857 for his cantata Clovis et Clotilde.

Both L'Arlésienne suites are taken from the incidental music Bizet wrote for Alfred Daudet's play of the same name, a melodrama about the love of the hero, Frédéri, for a girl from Arles in Provence, France. In a little over six weeks, and limited to an orchestra of 26 players, Bizet produced 27 numbers, some no more than a few bars long. Taken together, they are an orchestral tour de force. The orchestra includes a saxophone in E flat, tambourine, piano, and harmonium, with the addition of a small chorus. A few passages are for string quartet alone. The overall effect is of a fully developed, closely integrated set of movements that, as concert performances of the original version have shown, easily stand on their own, and benefit from being freed from the dialogue that accompanied them in the play.

In 1879 the Opéra Comique in Paris staged its wildly successful revival of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen. Public response to Bizet's music ran so strong that publishers began to clamor for more of his music -- such as could be found, since the composer had died four years early. Bizet's friend and amanuensis Ernest Guiraud turned to the task of evaluating what could be edited for publication of Bizet's surviving manuscripts. Girard had an intimate knowledge of Bizet's musical style, and it was he who had already transformed the few bits of spoken dialogue within Carmen into neat recitative.

It was quickly apparent to Girard that he had undertaken no easy task. Bizet had only arrived at his signature style some six years before his death, and precious little of Bizet's time had been devoted to the composition of original works. Much of it had been taken up with projects designed to pay the bills, primarily in creating piano/vocal scores of operas by his more celebrated contemporaries such as Gounod and Reyer -- works that are forgotten today.

Nonetheless, by 1880 Girard had decided to embark on constructing a second suite from Bizet's incidental music for Alphonse Daudet's 1872 play L'Arlesienne as companion to the composer's own suite. None of the 27 cues that Bizet had written for L'Arlesienne were very substantial in and of themselves, and Bizet had already mined most of the good ones himself. Also, the original work was written for a theater orchestra of less than 30 players. Girard decided to use Bizet's own L'Arlesienne Suite as a model for how to deal with enlarging the original orchestration, and as a result the second L'Arlesienne Suite resembles the first in terms of instrumental color.

The Pastorale that opens this suite was the most complete bit of music that Bizet had composed for L'Arlesienne that he hadn't used in the previous offering; the rest of the work posed a problem. Girard solved it by reprising part of the "Minuetto" from the first suite to flesh out the "Intermezzo" of the second, dovetailing the too-short "Farandole" into a reprise of the "Pastorale," and borrowing another minuet from an unrelated work, Bizet's opera La Jolie Fille de Perth. Later, Girard further borrowed the "Intermezzo" he'd created for this suite, added choral parts, and created the well-known Agnus Dei which bears Bizet's name. This latter work has to be considered spurious, considering its origins.

Despite the cut-and-paste method through which the second L'Arlesienne Suite was put together, it holds up fairly well to the first, and the two are quite frequently performed and recorded together. Both L'Arlesienne Suites constitute a major cornerstone in middle Romantic French orchestral literature, a field in which there are many contenders; few have held the public interest for as long and as well as these two suites of Bizet and Girard.

Source: AllMusic (https://www.allmusic.com/composition/l-arl%C3%A9sienne -suite-for-orchestra-no-2-from-the-incidental-music-arr anged-by-ernest-guirard-mc0002488577)

Although originally composed for Orchestra, I created this Arrangement of the Farandole from L'Arlésienne (Suite No. 2 Mvt. 4) for Small Orchestra (Flutes, Oboes, bb Clarinets, Bassoons, Bb Trumpets, Flugelhorns, French Horns, F Tubas, Timpani, Violins, Violas, Cellos & Basses).